Ducati team boss Vittoriano Guareschi says the squad needs to find a setup that allows riders Valentino Rossi and Nicky Hayden to perform consistently so it can stabilise its form.
After the encouragement of Rossi's podium at a wet Le Mans and a slight step forward in dry conditions at Catalunya, Ducati fell off back again at Silverstone, where Rossi struggled all weekend and finished a distant ninth, and Hayden lost sixth place to Cal Crutchlow on the final lap as his race pace tailed off.
"We must stay focused and work well in order to find a set-up that enables them to have a good performance over race distance," said Guareschi. "We have got nearer to that goal at some tracks, whereas others have proven to be more challenging for us, so we have to be more consistent with our efforts, while working on the other aspects of the development."
Rossi hopes to discover at Assen this weekend if his Silverstone slump was just a one-off or the start of a difficult trend.
"We'll try to start off with a good feeling with the track in order to improve our results a bit," he said. "For the moment, we can only work on the set-up to prepare the bike as we try to return to the level that we had attained prior to Silverstone, which was a very difficult race.
"We were a bit better at Barcelona and during the dry sessions at Le Mans, so we must at least regain that pace. If it should also happen to rain, we know that we can be more competitive."
Hayden added that his priority for Assen would be to avoid the high tire wear that spoiled his Silverstone race.
"If you look at the result of my last race, I can't say that it was really positive, but we learned a couple of things," he said. "One of those is that we need to try to come up with something to be easier on the tire, so we don't destroy it as quickly. We'll work on that in the Netherlands and try to get a good result."