Development and Improvement
Continuation of Development,
Development and Improvement
With an accepted prototype and/ or reviewed
brief the actual development work starts: everything that could be
parameterised and modelled in advanced has been done, colour, taste, texture
and shape become now more dominant whilst complying to certain parameters, e.g.:
- Aw, moisture and pH for most
products
- If applicable proofing and
baking times
- For more complex products:
different ratios; such as dough and filling proportions
How many experiments?
The amount of experiments required depend
highly on the product complexity, the availability of experience and materials
or application related literature. When developing with relatively new or
unknown ingredients (either for us or the complete industry) it is required to
develop a reference base.
We have done so with clients in particularly the food
ingredients industry where bakery application experience was not present and
important before, or if we look at one of our internal project on fibre
enrichment: of 99% of the supplied fibres it was not known how they interact
with water or oil or the combination.
Based on literature we could estimate
(and sometimes one can read it in a specification or talk to a representative
of the supplying company) if the fibre source is a soluble, insoluble or a
mixed source of fibers: we had to
develop our own reference points.
Challenged by new ingredients
With such new ingredients it can also be a
challenge: there are sometimes interactions that are unknown at the time of
development. So you can find a promising solution for e.g. shelf life extension
in a basic industry formulation, but once you remove several ingredients in
order to ‘clean the label’ all of a sudden a ‘hidden’ interaction is lost and
the solution is all of a sudden not interesting anymore.
Experience has learned that between 20 and
40 experiments gets us to a quality level that when we are looking at new
product development we are interacting with all stakeholders on the level of
finetuning required before we can start implementing this product on the
production line(s).
These final steps often mean fewer experiment in a day and
more days between experiments to fully understand if the product or process
adaptations are indeed for the best.
Need to know more? Feel free to contact us!