Best practices to avoid slowing down innovation processes

Whatever the food and beverage segment, a product is often changing. Change is the rule not the exception. Companies innovate constantly; even "best-sellers" need updates to remain profitable.

Launching a new product or going to new markets require companies to take many things into account such as documentation, ingredients, labeling, supply, regulations or safety.

Food and Beverage companies often maintain islands of product information spread across different departments and business units, with no overall visibility of product specifications in the company. This leads to high product costs and unstable quality standards. This could be avoided if products are manufactured in accordance with initial specifications.

To ensure specificities consistency, organized processes are key. Raw material, ingredients and product information must remain attached to a finished product at any stage of the lifecycle and being accessible by anyone with right to edit or update the products.

Lascom ensures product specifications management and provides a "single version of the truth" for all raw material, ingredients and product specifications across all divisions, locations, business processes, countries and languages.

Innovation : from complex and slow business processes

Many companies do not benefit from a centralized platform gathering all data and documentation about products. It results in several issues:

• Each department uses its own information while developing new products

• Data are not precise enough to meet new INCO regulation's requirements

• Data are duplicated in many places and at many update stages

• Repetitive processes are manual and error-prone

• Time to market is slow due to ineffective NPD processes

To a dynamic and collaborative innovation structure !

When Food and Beverage companies use many disconnected internal systems, there is no specification and product data harmonization. Manual data recovering from the actual finished product or from the initial specifications - discovering that data are finally different - is time-consuming and error-prone for R&D and Quality teams.

Risks due to a complex organization lead to ineffective and costly management (& Innovation slowdown!). First, obsolete information and non-compliances result in a large volume of recalls. Second, inability to efficiently innovate is a loss for the company .

Manage innovation means developing and launching products through a coherent and structured process.

This process begins with a unique repository providing a "single version of the truth" to participants involved. This repository gathers all data, documents and information about products. Once centralized, efficient information management is easier. It also allows:

• Improved traceability; versions are gathered and attached to each product. It is easier to understand changes and tack them

• Decrease of administrative tasks; NPD process is more efficient. Teams focus on design, production and launching instead of re-keying data or sending information through emails. Time to market is reduced, providing competitive advantage on the market place

• More secure information ; Access rights are defined regarding roles in projects

• Better collaboration with suppliers; Providing access to suppliers to the central repository, directly involved them in the NPD process and facilitate raw material traceability and changes

To learn more about our solution and how to be in compliance with INCO, click here