The process industries span several industrial sectors, such as minerals and metals, pulp and paper, food and beverages, chemicals and petrochemicals, utilities and generic pharmaceuticals; thus, they constitute a considerable part of the manufacturing industries. In the family of process industries, a substantial part of company research and development (R&D) lies in the area of helping customers use their supplied products more effectively; this area is generally designated application development in the process industries. Based on the findings from a survey of major process companies in Sweden, the results from three previously publications on different aspects of application development have been merged into a coherent framework. The importance of application development to all companies was judged to be very high, and as a mean value, 30% of all company R&D resources were allocated to application development. Most of the companies in this study carried out application development not only with their customers but also with their customers' customers and customers' equipment suppliers. At the extremes, one firm expected 80% of application development to give customers improved products, while the other extreme expected only improved customer process technology. Improving company market shares in the process industries thus depends both on competitive products and on the collaborative development of the customer's use of those products.
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