How To Develop A New Product
The process of developing a new product comprises three phases, namely formulation or recipe development, standardization of processing methods, and evaluation and testing of quality parameters of the final product.
The critical issues here are:
(i) to find out the optimised recipe,
(ii) to evolve effective processing conditions
(iii) to ensure food products of high quality and
(iv) to accurately predict marketability.
It is well known that most of the food products contain a variety of ingredients and preparing the product involves several processing steps. So, while working on a new product one has to study whether the recipes and methods of processing can yield an acceptable product, or is there a need for modifying them to improve the quality and to meet the demands of the market. The three phases of product development, you learnt about earlier, are interrelated and any changes that are made in implementation of one phase, will affect other two phases. Therefore, the task of planning the work becomes complicated. The simplest methodology, therefore, in product development is adopting one - factor - at - a time method which is also known as trial and error method. It is a simple method in which if changes are to be made in the formulation, only one of the ingredients can be changed at time. For example flavourings, salt, and sugar are the ingredients used in the preparation of sweet and spicy varieties of fried snacks. These are considered as the variables which influence the product quality. Affect of flavourings is tested by varying its level while maintaining constant salt and sugar levels. The product with optimal quality is selected. The optimal salt and sugar levels are then determined in a similar way. The optimal levels of flavourings, salt and sugar are then combined in the preparation of the sweet and spicy fried snack which will have the overall optimum quality. The trial and error method has been in use for along time. But this optimization method has certain disadvantages:
1. It is laborious and time consuming
2. It does not provide information about variable interaction effects, and
3. Achieved optimum consists only one variable levels that are actually tested. This could lead an inexperienced product developer to unreliable or false optimal results.
In the above example, the change in salt and / or flavourings levels would probably modify the optimal salt level. Because of these possibilities the " overall optimum' achieved might not be the true optimum.