I think it depends on the frequency of the missed milestones, how novel the company is, and the companies’ ability to financially support these “failures.” While it is true that each failure brings the company valuable experience on what doesn’t work, there is a limit to the magnitude of loss profits and time. For companies that are new to the design control process, failure to some extent is expected from setting unrealistic goals and underestimating the time required to complete each step. It is difficult and unlikely to come up with the optimal specifications and parameters of a product on the first shot. However, the company will need to pick up on the changes they need to make before they begin the next. In some cases, they made need to restructure the group and hire more employees with expertise in certain departments (like validation and quality control).