Definition: Process in this system refers to how strongly you adhere to the written and unwritten procedures that govern the design and development of equipment.
If Process is your top priority, then many of your requirements will come from your process - there will be lots of boilerplate you will use. If Specification is higher than the process, then the opposite it true - your tailoring of the Process will captured in the spec, and people will look there first.
A strong process also tends to lock in the other priorities - most processes produce rigid Schedules, Non Recurring Costs, even Recurring Costs.
It can be very confusing to try to work out issues with the other priorities if the top priority is Process. People will keep coming back to, "but our process doesn't say to do that, so I can't". The one card you can play is if you are doing something new, you may be able to revise the process to enable what you are looking for as an improvement.
If you do not have Resource Constraints, a dedicated process person is very nice in these situations. Some people are very good at this, and this will free you up for the task of enforcement.
That's right, the primary work to do on Process is enforcement and redirection of strays. This is the primary reason Process affects Non Recurring Costs. People have to read and follow more documents, and keep more records of it for metrics and improvement. How do you know the process is being followed if you don't check it? If enforcement is unnecessary because of the discipline of the engineering culture, then your cost will be very predictable, but it will be very difficult to be creative and reduce Non Recurring Costs. Process provides certainty, but not the 2X+ improvements that come from innovative methods.
While Process makes Schedules more rigid, it doesn't necessarily make them worse.
When we were putting in snow plow monitoring systems, our process was very tight due to the timing of equipment availability. Our customers used to be shocked when I would say upon award, "Ok, we will be there in two days for a survey, we'll need that, that and that". Our process demanded this, so we could deliver in 3 months. And they needed that delivery schedule, because, well, snow happens.
How do you get your pizza in 20 minutes? Your Chinese takeout? Process.
So by sticking with the process, you have certainty in your Non Recurring Costs and Schedule. If people are used to working very fast, to a fixed process, you may not have good success trying to get them to do something else. This is why operations does such a bad job with engineering prototypes. No matter what you ask them to do, about an hour later, they will be back on their process.
Recurring Costs are all about Process. Products that are compatible with an existing process have lower Recurring Costs. Manufacturing engineers may change their process slightly, but they have too many Resource Constraints of their own to change much. Don't expect them to. Pick someone who is compatible, or design to meet their guidelines. This is the intent of Design for Manufacturing. What has worked best for me is to provide a package to several contractors, pick the best one, get their design rules, then modify the design to make it more compatible with their existing process for a better Recurring Cost. If Process is a very high priority, the customer may direct use of a CM (or country) which has higher Recurring Costs than your standard method. This has happened to me twice in the last few years. Our culture was that Recurring Cost was more important than Process, but customer direction proved otherwise.
If you have low Resource Constraints, and high Process requirements, you should pick a manufacturing organization that meets your Process requirements, rather than select an organization to meet any other parameters and get them to implement a new Process.