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.

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