The description of the contribution of manufacturing to the innovation process is often limited to the task of providing the necessary information to enable the development function to create a design which is easy to manufacture, and to be instrumental in the fast ramp-up of the production process. Though these are important tasks, it is argued in this paper that there is a third aspect of manufacturing’s contribution to innovation, namely the creation of a manufacturing system which is favorable to product innovation. This goes far beyond the design of an appropriate production process, but requires the creation of a general manufacturing environment which is amenable to product innovation. This thesis is tested with data from a large survey of senior manufacturing managers.