A critical path I identified occurred during the R&D phase of a project I was working on before it became a formal project. We were working on creating a surgical lavage and had found a substance that after multiple iterations and testing was optimized in performing it’s intended function, or so we thought. It turns out that the physical form the substance was in allowed for greater optimization of the material. At first we were using it in it’s standard form, but we discovered that using a sonicator allowed us to amplify the effects of the material in it’s new form. At first we thought of the form the material was in as a nonfactor, however after various tests we were able to confirm and prove that changing the form of the material allowed for a more efficient product.