New Product Development for a Retail Food Product

Details

1. What – The goal was to design quality, ‘commercialized’ product prototypes for market testing (Central Location Testing) under a timeline created to meet a national launch window. This meant that the team was required to develop a minimum of 3-4 prototypes in 4 months or less, including scale-up in a pilot lab, product production, and shipping to test centers. (A usual timeline would have been 8-12 months for this type of work.)
   
   
2. Who – A cross-functional team with representatives from Product Development, Sensory, QA and Marketing led by a technical project manager and organized into a trial team and support staff.
   
   
3. Where – Tennessee
   
   
4. How long – Given the initial written description or marketing concept,     the development team had approximately 4 months to develop prototypes. The development and product production were completed in less than 12 weeks. Constraints included pilot plant time and staffing, sensory testing schedules and raw material availability.
   
   
5. How – The following is a summary of the four part product development process:
1. Bench-top screening of ingredients and initial flavor conceptualization.
2. A standardized procedure of documented trials, product evaluation and sensory testing.
3. Sensory evaluation with consumer input: Overall Liking of flavor and product attributes followed by Extent of Difference testing on resulting product iterations.  In the first chart below two key factors, cook time and ingredient level, were significant in increasing the overall liking of the “Just about Right” or JAR color.
   
   
   
   In this chart the increased cook time significantly increased the perception of “Just about Right” color of the product.
   
   
   
   
4. Final Triangle testing on scaled-up product to verify that pre-determined, key product attributes were maintained.
   
   
6. Why – A minimum of one product was required for eventual national launch and ideally an additional 2-3 would be developed to have additional introductions ready for the future. Product launches were scheduled during one period each year which dictated the project timetable. If this portion of the project had not been successful, or fallen behind in the timing, the company could have been in the position of either having to spend a significant amount of money to meet the goal or missing a launch opportunity.
   New flavor - Six (6) new prototypes were developed in eleven (11) weeks with high overall liking scores greater than 7.5 on a 9 point scale.
   
   
7. Processes & Procedures Used – A systematic approach to project management, communication, documentation and decision making, including the following:
   
   
   1.  Decisions were data driven based on consumer input in sensory testing. This eliminated much of the subjectivity, pet theories and political strategies in the final results. Objective measures allowed the data and therefore the product attributes, to speak for themselves.
      
      
   2. Success was supported by organized project management including a clearly defined objective, success criteria and project priority, an identified project sponsor with leadership authority who was able to provide resources, and clearly defined roles and responsibilities for team members.
      
      
   3. The project team consisted of a technical group that determined next steps and interpreted results; a trial team that performed the design of experiments; a sensory team that conducted the testing; and a stakeholder group that monitored progress.
      
      
   4.  A single project schedule was maintained by the project manager so that all the pertinent information could be communicated in one document. A key component was to schedule the development work and pilot lab time as far out as possible to allow time to gather staff and materials. Scheduled activities included meetings, product evaluations, pilot lab time, data deliverables and Sensory testing for projects on shared calendars. Additional preparation included longer range planning at the time product trials were scheduled, such as setting dates for sensory testing and review of results.
      
      
   5. Standardized paperwork for documentation of trials and results simplified reporting and analysis. Each product trial followed a consistent format with a defined objective and uniform documentation. Trial team members met in advance of each trial to discuss feasibility, roles and key issues.