Extreme Performance differences between PROD & DEV : What could it be?

Summary

Extreme Performance differences between PROD & DEV : What could it be?

Content

HI Folks -

Scratching my head here trying to understand why I'm seeing extreme performance differences between PROD and DEV.

The process is as follows:

We data export every 15 minutes which we then load to target systems.  Each data export only takes like 1 minute or less.  In DEV, performance is great. However in PROD, each data export run gets slower and slower each time its executed. The only way to regain performance is to do an  All Data export, and then reimport.  First execute runs great then beginnings to decrease in performance.