Supply Chain Contracts - Should They Be Approached at the Outset?

A supply chain contract that contemplates both development and production stages ideally should allow for a renegotiation based on objective measures. Having production milestones at regular intervals forces parties to assess whether the thing is really working before a small problem becomes a big problem. Sometimes engineers get addicted to the engineering process and don't include the commercial realities in their decision making, as they should. The same with supply chains. Sometimes they're less flexible than they should be if left solely to their own devices.