This topic was first presented at our 2021 annual user conference. 

Global markets are increasingly demanding new products, such as stevia-based sweeteners or plant-based meat alternatives, and food manufacturing companies are answering the call.

It is important for companies to collaborate smoothly and efficiently to get their new products to market as fast as possible.

“How do we collaborate to bring innovation to new regions by working with our international colleagues? We’ve got some exciting solutions to bring to the market. How do we do that?” The Director of R&D at one of the largest global food manufacturing companies asks.

As companies innovate to meet the new market opportunities, companies need tools that facilitates cooperative work and fast, streamlined development of new products.

Avoiding duplication of efforts

One challenge for this food manufacturer is to make sure development teams are collaborating efficiently. In order to support efforts to innovate, the company has to make sure globally distributed developers create unique products and replicating recipes.

“Formulation collaboration is key because we have beverage development teams around the world and we don’t want to duplicate our efforts and have teams recreating things that some teams already did,” says the company’s Director of R&D.

To support international collaboration, the company uses Trace One Devex PLM, a cloud-based lifecycle management platform, to share knowledge on new projects and formulas.

“This tool is great for formulation collaboration because there’s visibility at the right level for people to be able to see those projects,” says the director, who notes the advantage of transparency in developing future products.

Collaboration gets a big boost from PLM

Trace One Devex PLM makes it easy to create new projects, add colleagues from other regions, and work in unison, no matter where team members are located. Cooperation within Trace One Devex PLM is aided by greater transparency among developers and the ability to quickly pull up previous versions of a recipe. This accelerates time to market and creates a better experience for everyone.

“They can see the documents and information that I’m sharing,” observes the director, commenting on the advantage of a centralized platform. “That’s really something that’s just so cool, because before we might have been exchanging spreadsheets or things in shared workspaces. This is just so much cleaner, quicker, and much easier to find and collaborate.”

Clear and efficient collaboration is a key outcome from utilizing a PLM. By providing a more transparent space for global team members to connect, Trace One Devex PLM empowers formulators to quickly develop products that can succeed in any market.