Creating New Foods. The Product Developer's Guide - The product development project in the company

Project Break 1

Product Development is a practical subject and learning is achieved by taking an active part in a project. Therefore readers are strongly urged to work through the ideas in each chapter in an industrial application. If possible choose a product development project in your company, preferably a project that is starting but a completed project can be used.

Because some students may not have a company project, actual projects are included in the book (see Project 1 below). There is a different project in each chapter and readers can either work with all of them or carry one through as an individual project.

Company Project
Discover the company's business strategy, the product strategy and the product development strategy for this product area. If there is no product strategy or product development strategy write one, and have it assessed by management. Discuss how the product development project fits in with these strategies.

Study how product development has been organised in the past and select the method that you think would be the most successful for this project.

Project 1 (below)
Compare the four methods of exploring export product development for the company and then select the method that is most likely to be efficient and successful. For this method, outline a business strategy for the company, a product strategy and a product development strategy.

Outline several ways that product development could be organised in the company and select the most suitable method remembering that this is a small company without large resources.

For both projects
1. Design a Product Development Process and determine what top management decisions are to be made at the end of each of the four stages of the PD process, and then relate these to the outcomes for each stage.

2. From this, write the aim for the product development project and see how it 'fits' with the company's strategies.

Project 1
Frozen bakery snacks

A medium-sized bakery company has essentially built its business on the domestic consumer market with fresh bakery products, but has also a single substantial export line in bulk frozen pastry to one overseas country, Malaysia. It wishes to explore the possibility of marketing consumer packs of frozen, fryable, pastry snacks to retailers in the same market.

The bakery has a managerial structure of an owner/managing director, a plant manager, a sales manager and a secretary/accountant. They need their new export product to stabilise and increase their business. They have concluded that the product development needs to be done as well as possible and so they are prepared to commit substantial resources.

The managing director met a Malaysian entrepreneur in an international Rotary gathering, who indicated that he would like to nominate a product, sort out its practicalities and distribute it. The plant manager plays squash with a locally based Malaysian, who has cousins whom he is sure could organise a suitable product and handle it. The secretary thinks they should employ a firm of international accountants, which has set up a management/marketing subsidiary and claims product development expertise, to deliver a complete product, production and marketing package.

There is debate and indecision. The management committee decide to temporise and employ a new product development graduate on a short contract to prepare a structural proposal for a product development team within the company. This team would not only explore and hopefully generate the Malaysian frozen product but would also give the company an enduring capability on which business and product expansion in the future would be built. The product developer is also asked to comment on the general merits of the new proposal weighed against the suggested out-of-house alternatives. The management also want the product developer to develop a plan for the project.

Lai, Pai Wan (1987) Development of a bakery snack for export from New Zealand to Malaysia, Ph.D. thesis, Massey University, New Zealand.

CHAPTER 2: THE ORGANISATION OF THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

Back to the top

Creating New Foods. The Product Developer's Guide. Copyright © Chartered Inst. of Environmental Health.
Web Edition published by NZIFST (Inc.)