5.1 INTRODUCTION

Product design takes a long time and a great deal of effort. It is important to target the design programme to minimise time and costs and to plan for it to be successfully completed within allocated resources. Time is very much of the essence, the minimum compatible with optimal development.

In a product design plan, there are many activities to be first recognised and then coordinated; some activities are worked in sequence, some in parallel. In particular, multidisciplinary activities are focused in the same direction and coordinated in time. The master plan coordinates the various people and their mini-projects in an overall time and resource plan so that the product design can be controlled.

The plan begins with the product design specifications. These include a profile of the product characteristics as defined by the consumer, the structure and composition, safety factors, convenience and aesthetics, and also indicates the manufacturing, processing and storage variables and their effects on the product qualities. Many of these product design specifications start as general descriptions; product design and process development focuses them into definite, quantitative descriptions.

In the design process, the product and process development are integrated so that at the end of the design stage there is a product with the optimum qualities, and a process to produce it. A great deal of time is lost if a food product is designed under 'kitchen conditions' and then has to be redesigned as the process is developed.

In food product design:

      important marketing factors are consumer acceptability,
      competitive positioning, legal regulations, ethical requirements,
      environmental mandates and distributor requirements;

      important technical factors are ease of processing, cost,
      raw material availability, attainability and reliability of product quality,
      shelf life, equipment needs, human knowledge and skills; and

      important financial factors are costs of manufacturing and
      distribution, costs of further development and the investment needed.