R&D Methodology

A methodology is a program of action to achieve a particular goal. There is only one goal, but there are many methods. If you have enough experience and theoretical knowledge, you may be able to quickly find the most suitable one among the many methods and implement it to achieve the goal. If you do not have this ability, then you have to design several different methods to practice, let practice tell us which method is the best. In this process, your experience will be accumulated and your theory will be enriched.

How to accumulate experience and how to enrich the theoretical foundation? The accumulation of experience comes from watching, listening and doing. Watching comes from other people’s recipes, magazine articles, products in the market, and so on. Listening comes from your ears, of course, listen attentively and capture effective information. The most important thing is to do, only the actual hands-on, other people’s experience through your hands-on practice is possible to become their own experience and be memorized.

The theoretical foundation initially comes from university life, but perhaps you will find that the theory in the classroom and the theory in practice may be very different. The main reason for this is that the classroom is purely theoretical, a theory that can only be established under certain conditions, but in practice there are a lot of uncertainties, so the theory can sometimes be biased. This also shows that “practice is the only criterion for testing the truth”.

In practice, we need to have an in-depth understanding of the properties, varieties and flavors of the main ingredients in our products (e.g., tea, juice, grains, milk proteins, etc.). These are the basic skills of theory.

R&D Principles

New products must be in line with the company’s vision

The company’s strategy determines the company’s vision and corporate image, and it is the department’s duty to realize the company’s strategy. Therefore, our product development planning is centered around that vision.

Formulation is as simple as possible

Every ingredient written in a recipe sheet has to have a theoretical or practical basis. Why does it have to be added? Dare to be decisive in discarding ingredients that can be added or not.

Why should the recipe be as simple as possible? First of all, beneficial to the cost, secondly, beneficial to the production operation (simple), thirdly, beneficial to the procurement management, warehouse management, and fourthly, can be controlled from the source to reduce the generation of dull material.

The same series of products to ensure commonality before considering individuality

Commonality is the identification of your series of products, the only way to make consumers feel that these products are a whole, a series, rather than separate, self-contained. Secondly, commonality can also effectively save purchasing costs and maximize the prevention of dull material generation.

It is difficult to ensure commonality when a series of products are assigned to different groups for development. Individuality is the embodiment of differentiation in the same series of products, sometimes in flavors, sometimes in flavor ingredients. Therefore, when a series of products are assigned to a group of different product people, the group leader should assume the responsibility of the unity of the commonality of each product developer in the group to consciously communicate and coordinate to achieve the goal of unity of the commonality.

Reserve products in the reserve process must be carried out stability tests

The timing of the market launch of the reserve products has greater uncertainty, because the products we reserve are carried out under our product planning system, which is in line with the company’s product development direction. For this reason, the more adequate the preliminary preparations made before the official launch of the product, the fewer problems it may face in the future after the launch, such as changes in flavor, color, stability, physical and chemical indicators, etc., which need to be observed and tested through time.

For this reason, when the internal taste test of the reserve product is passed, the observation of the stability test should be started, which can be achieved by using the resources of the supplier’s UHT or external laboratories to achieve its observability, and at the same time, do a good job of recording the evaluation during the observation period.

Communication and coordination with suppliers

Suppliers are friends, not enemies. What we need to do is to maximize the use of supplier resources: requesting samples, recipe debugging, troubleshooting, technical support, access to information, and so on. R&D is an open system, because only openness can innovate, only openness can get information. But at the same time, there is also a degree of problem, my principle is in the quality of service to ensure the premise of reasonable price. The interests of the company should not be sacrificed under any circumstances.

The choice of suppliers should be based on the following factors to consider:

Priority is given to manufacturers rather than agents or middlemen;

For bulk raw materials, give preference to the supplier with the best price/performance ratio;

For the purchase of small, highly technical raw materials, choose some international companies with advanced technology and good service to get supporting technical support.

Enterprise standard issues

The Standardization Law of the People’s Republic of China, adopted in 1988, provides that: “Enterprises producing products without national standards and industry standards, should formulate enterprise standards as the basis for the organization of production, there are national standards and industry standards, the state encourages enterprises to formulate enterprise standards that are stricter than the national standards or industry standards, for internal use within enterprises “. With regard to the current national conditions in China, the fundamental reason for most enterprises to develop enterprise standards is that there is no national standard to refer to, and not for the purpose of developing enterprise standards that are stricter than national standards.

Therefore, we are asked to give priority to the use of national standards in the future in the formulation of standards where there are national standards, and then formulate enterprise standards where there are no national standards. Moreover, when formulating enterprise standards, we should make reference to the actual development of the enterprise, and formulate enterprise standards that are in line with the interests of the enterprise.

Professional Ethics

The results of food research and development is directly provided to consumers of the terminal fast-moving consumer goods, the health of each consumer, so we ask that no matter when, in what company, as long as you are still engaged in this profession, you will never be allowed to add add additives that do not meet the food safety in their own hands to their own products, which is the most basic professional ethics of research and development. We want to provide consumers with safe and secure products.

Issues to think about during the R&D process

Before you get your hands on a product, you need to answer a few questions:

1. What is the product positioning?

2. Are there any competitors? What are the competitors?

3. How much is the cost control?

4. Can the existing process be basically realized?

5. What are the main raw materials? Is the source of raw materials guaranteed?

6. What kind of packaging form?

7. Is there any special requirement or demand for planning?

8. Is there any relevant standard? If not, what do we want his standards?

These questions are done in the new product development process requirements, answer these questions to help reduce unnecessary waste of time, improve R & D efficiency, reduce rework, and avoid possible risks in advance. Of course, these questions may not all rely on our self-judgment, self-solution. That’s why I always emphasize proactive communication, proactive communication may not be able to get all the answers, but at least let others realize that we are concerned about some of the issues, which can enhance your professional image!

Take beverage product development for example:

1. Find out the national standard or enterprise standard with reference, so that the product from the design stage to meet the needs of the standard. For example, juice content, tea polyphenol content, protein content and so on. This is also the theoretical basis for the next step of formula design.

2. Find the most core raw materials. For example, if you make black tea beverage, you have to consider whether to use tea powder or tea juice concentrate. Evaluation of the perspective of the main quality, cost, ease of production and operation, ease of storage and so on. Assuming we use tea powder after evaluation, then we will look at what kinds of black tea powder are actually available, and their taste characteristics (compared with the flavor of competing products), price, availability, etc. should be included in the considerations. Eventually we will choose a few products for further comparison.

3. Design program. Before designing the program, we need to have a preliminary understanding of the product’s desired PH, sugar level, viscosity and other basic information. Only in this way, the designed program is targeted.

In the stage of designing the program, we should focus on importing the cost control requirements, and design various programs to reach the goal under the premise of controllable cost. In this stage, we have to form the core raw materials, sugar-acid ratio, the main flavor texture and other major issues of the preliminary conclusions. For example, what kind of combination should be used for sugar, what kind of acid combination should be used for acid, what kind of combination should be used for core raw materials, and whether there is any common use of raw materials in the current product formula, and other key issues are all expected to be evaluated and confirmed through effective design solutions. This is the so-called base.

4. Taste refinement: After the completion of Base, we consider more about the flavor, salt, quality improver and other trace elements to improve the taste. At the same time, we should check whether the addition of various raw materials is in accordance with the requirements of national laws and regulations, and whether the raw materials in the current product formula can be used in common.

5. Stability observation: after the completion of the initial confirmation of taste, the color of the system, the stability of stabilizers, add the stability of functional factors for observation and evaluation. In fact, this aspect of the work in the program design stage should be taken into account, this time is more of a verification. For example, some pigments in a particular PH stability is different, then we should be targeted in the design of the program to choose.

6. Process design. Process is to realize the technical requirements of the product, we can take each parameter of the process we developed and ask why? There is uncertainty and then find some people to ask a question. The good or bad process design directly leads to the quality of the final product, such as taste, stability, flavor, but also affects the cost of manufacturing and product costs. The most typical example is the extraction process, primary and secondary extraction will directly lead to the extraction rate of high and low, but over-extraction will lead to changes in the taste and stability of the product, which requires us to design different programs to verify, in order to get the best process conditions.

These stages are not absolutely separate, in practice, must be interspersed with each other, just to remind you to be placed in a higher altitude to look at the development of the product, to be purchased from the procurement, manufacturing, warehousing, planning, laws and regulations, taste, cost and many other aspects of comprehensive consideration. Only in this way can everyone’s work be systematic.

It takes a lot of time and energy to complete these tasks very systematically for each product, and sometimes the R&D schedule does not allow us to do so. Then we need to accumulate experience and exercise learning along the direction of product planning in our daily work, so that we have the opportunity to shorten the development time of new products.