Functional strategy for product development, quality assurance and nutritional labelling

In our Country technological intensity of the Food Industry is increasing new companies are coming up, and individual companies are beginning to commit more resources to technical endeavours. There have been some striking changes over the past decade in how Food Manufacturers have chosen to expand and diversify their business.
As a major Manufacturers of Biscuit, Cookies and Wafers in Pakistan, English Biscuits Manufacturers (Private) Limited, produces a large variety of products to satisfy a wide range of consumer needs and choices.
The Company has been well recognised for its new products, for excellence based on highly successful brands as SOOPER COOKIES. Two flavoured Cream in "RIO" Range, fortified Biscuits "Gluco" the Chocolate Chips Cookies Range "SMILE", sweet and salty product "CLICK" and WHOLE WHEAT SLICES".
EBM is the First Company to have introduced the concept of nuts in Cookies. The Company's Product "PEANUT PIK", PEANUT PIK WITH PISTA", "PARTY" are very popular in all segments.
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: Generally speaking, a new product development process involves different preparatory steps and requires input from various functional areas including Market Research, Advertising, Research & Development, Finance and Sales.
NUMBER OF GROWTH - GENERATING PRODUCTS IS ATTRIBUTED TO THE FOLLOWING FACTORS:
1) A very strong Research and Development Department having dedicated personnel.
2) A rigorous planning process.
3) Full range senior management support
4) Strong cross functional team work.
5) A pro- active product development team.
INNOVATIVE PROGRAMME: Research and Development innovative programme is based on the following key promises:
First, each brand has to fill a real gap in the Market Place. That may seem obvious, perhaps even a little simplistic, but it is vitally important. A number of new products are introduced by different Companies each year and most of them fail because the marketer did not fill the right gap with right product.
Second, the product should be based on some specific trend, EBM uses a broad range of Consumer Research and Internal expertise to ensure that its products are abreast of, ahead of, Consumer trends.
Third, it has to be executed flawlessly, including the fundamentals. Even the best of the new products will not succeed if their positioning, packaging or marketing is splintered, or otherwise flawed. The Fourth and key principle is that the taste, texture and appearance should be supreme and have acceptability in all segments of Customers.
QUALITY ASSURANCE AND AWARANCESS: There are world-wide trends towards increasing stringent Customers expectations with regard to Quality. We know from experience that only by operating under "Product Quality Controls " can management and Customers be assured that products meet both corporate and Government product Quality Requirement.
In order to Control the Quality of Food during processing, one must have a technically and administratively sound system. In order to meet management and Customer aspirations, a Quality Assurance System must fulfill the following requirements:
1) GENERAL: To understand the process of maintaining Control of Quality, one must start at the beginning the Development of the product and process. All scientific information, component, interaction, component stability, product quality - container interaction and product must be used in the development of a product.
2) SANITATION: There must be adherence to sanitation standards, and subsequent compliance, Good Food Manufacturing Practice. This includes plant and storage pest control. It also includes plant storage and equipment sanitation, sanitation in the sense of visual cleanliness, freedom from infestation and micro-biological cleanliness.
3) UNIFORMITY OF SPECIFICATION: There should be adherence to specification for ingredients, packaging and finished products. The specification must be well designed they must be attainable and acceptable to the vendor, with well understood methods of sampling and evaluation.
4) PROCEDURE: Formulas end procedure are usually developed by the Research Department and places into a standard format by a "Product Standards" division of Quality Assurance and distributed to the plants. In this way, a plant will follow the same instruction all of the time. Even with unchanged personnel and if more than one, plant is involved, each plant will be following the same instruction to produce the same results.
5) LABEL COMPLIANCE: Management should expect that the Quality Control Function is Auditing Compliance with Label Statements and Requirements and assisting in cost Control in so far as fill of container and net weight are concerned. Too little control will result in short fills or over fills.
6) PROCESS CONTROL: Each Food depending on critical factor such as the nature of the product, its density and the size of the container require different equipment and operation for product preparation and processing. This includes control of contamination.
Safeguards must be developed against inadequate processes. In other words management expects the Development of procedure to Control the critical points ie in Bakery Industry, moisture retention percentage are very important.
7) TRAINING: Management expects an active, or going organised programme to train and thus involves Supervisors and operators with the Quality concepts, one of the groups that should be best qualified to conduct or assist in the training involvement is that of Quality Assurance.
8) TECHINCAL SERVICE: Expectation of good, co-operative, liaison and working relationships between the Quality Assurance Staff and the Production Personnel are very important.
NUTRITIONAL LABELING IN PAKISTAN: In our Country where the diet contains a wide variety of Food, Vitamin and Mineral deficiencies occur often. Very rare Companies indicate on the label Nutritional Detail.
It is high time that regulatory Institutes make standard for Nutritional Labelling in a way that information to be provided on Nutritional Labels must be scientifically sound and in line with present day Nutrition thinking, Nutrition Labels should provide the information, Consumers want in a form that is clearly understood, Nutrition Labelling should not present practical problems for the manufacturers or retailer, and Nutrition Labels should be quickly and easily recognisable.
(The writer is Director, Research & Product Development English Biscuit Manufacturers (Private) Limited Coronet Foods (Private) Limited)