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When trendy new products become global supermarket sensations, fast-moving manufacturers need to respond quickly. Launching similar or localized versions at speed can give brands a critical edge. Dubai chocolate is a great example — once a local treat, it now appears in every imaginable form: bars, pralines, beverages, and even spreads.
So how do leading food manufacturers keep up with the pace of trends and stay compliant across every region? Our experts Johanna, Jürg, and Frank discuss this and other important topics for F&B manufacturers.
Frank: The most important question first: How can manufacturers develop new products in record time, and what problems arise with such rapid developments?
Jürg: It’s a huge advantage to be very fast in product development. Ideas come in, and you need and want an immediate answer. But this speed shouldn’t only apply to product development, collaboration across purchasing, marketing, and sales is just as important. Everything starts with shared, structured data and solid communication.
Frank: Being able to work together in a structured way is the basis for rapid and efficient project progress. So, good project management?
Johanna: Absolutely. I come from product management, where you get to follow the entire development. If you have good PLM (product lifecycle management) systems with project templates that clearly define who has to do what by when, or if there’s a briefing at a central location accessible to everyone, you save a lot of time. It’s also becoming increasingly important to react quickly with your own product development to changing competitive conditions or circumstances. Data quality is crucial.
Jürg: Starting in product development, a lot of data comes in: recipe templates, recipe changes, recipe developments, new product developments. All of this needs to be passed on, and with the same data. Before using SpecPage, most manufacturers maintained recipes, nutritional values, or ingredient calculations with Excel. Working with Excel is often tedious, error-prone, and frequently leads to corrections. With SpecPDM, most things are automated. The system calculates nutritional values automatically, as well as costs or allergens. Above all, it passes on clean data.
Johanna: And it provides users with the most cost-effective recipe when, for example, you need to enter certain requirements. If I want to achieve a certain vitamin C content in a specific recipe, the PLM system calculates the cheapest recipe.
Jürg: When I look at multi-level recipes in a PLM system, I have full insight into the data, including allergens. Allergens are a knockout criterion in product development; you have to have them 100% under control. I can’t keep all raw materials in my head. If something changes or potentially changes, I need to see that. A PLM system provides the information immediately. This also differs from country to country, but SpecPage points this out directly to users.
Johanna: And changes in development are part of daily business in the department. Whether these changes and the associated calculations have to be laboriously entered into Excel afterwards or whether it happens automatically in the software makes a huge difference.
Jürg: There are no incorrect data in the PLM solution if the basic data set is correct. Changes are automatically recalculated. If purchasing changes a raw material, quality management has to approve it; defined workflows are in place. The development department is informed, and all changes are 100% under control, whether for important allergens or ingredients.
Frank: Ingredients, nutritional values, and costs … and what about the declarations that have to be created in parallel for every product development?
Jürg: After implementing SpecPage, the system offers a solution that perfectly analyses and digitizes the processes in product development, especially in this area.
Frank: Many tasks during product development are perfect for digitization. Recipe creation, component changes, calculations, and recurring processes are supported by defined workflows. These points are especially important for a global market launch, because doing all steps individually and in Excel, and then for different target countries, causes data chaos that is extremely error-prone.
Jürg: Errors are avoided with solid specification management. By this, we mean a specification data chain, i.e., specifications from raw material to finished product.
Johanna: Exactly. If we go back to our Dubai chocolate example, you can imagine the documentation effort starting with the raw materials. To sell it across different regions, manufacturers must document ingredients, allergens, and nutritional information to meet each market’s unique labeling and compliance rules. For Dubai chocolate, I have specifications for pistachio cream, for cocoa mass, for milk powder, cocoa butter, and so on. This is a multi-level process that is no longer easy to manage manually. That’s why SpecPage calculates recipes based on the raw material specifications. The program can consider up to 20 levels and automatically calculates nutritional values, allergens, ingredients, and other important factors in the background. And it does this in multiple languages!
Jürg: That means, if I change a raw material, it’s automatically visible on the finished product by region, country, or customer.
Frank: The topic of compliance requirements at the international level is still missing, but we’ll cover that in our next interview.
From fast-tracking recipe development to eliminating Excel errors, SpecPage gives food and beverage manufacturers the tools they need to respond to trends and expand globally. This is all done without sacrificing accuracy, speed, or compliance. As our experts shared, automation and structured data are not just helpful. They are essential for managing complexity and staying competitive across diverse markets.
Up next in SpecTalk: Global compliance — and how manufacturers can simplify the most chaotic part of product launch.
About Johanna:
Johanna Huber is a Sales Engineer for SpecPage at Revalize. She brings a background in food management and experience in sales and product management at a large F&B producer to Revalize, and specializes in product lifecycle management.
About Jürg:
Jürg Schiess is Director of Product Management at Revalize. As both a project manager and subject matter expert, he has over 20 years of experience in the food industry.
About Frank:
As an Account Manager in the Food & Beverage sector, Frank combines solid industry knowledge with a keen sense for customer needs and market trends. He supports clients holistically—from the first idea to successful implementation.