In general flavor development process is initiated by a customer order or by BBA itself trying new flavor to market. The sales or marketing people act as a bridge between R&D department and customers during the process of flavor development. In a typical project a sample flavor can be delivered in seven days and the tricky part is getting the feedback from customers. It is frustrating for the sales people to get a feedback after three weeks asking for a change. The complete process goes back and forth to development team and customers. Also, on an average about 15% of all development requests would eventually be accepted by customer.
Traditionally in the flavor industry all the R&D expenses are borne by flavor makers like BBA. Most of the flavors are customized to specific requests by the customers and involves a huge amount of time and resources investment by flavor makers like BBA. The development process impacts multiple departments such as marketing, regulatory, quality control, management. This increases the cost of flavor production to BBA and apart from that to maintain a strong market presence flavor makers need to respond quickly to customer requests. 2. Characterize the proposed development process using the “spider” technology.
To maintain a market presence and be competitive, it is imperative for any flavor maker to come up with innovative ideas and processes. The “spider” technology was such idea which is focused on reducing the flavor development process. This technology provides the customers with the option of creating their own flavors with just the click of a button. One can try different combination from the base flavors to create a customized final product.
The new system operates by mixing the ingredients of a flavor using a computer. The system provides the flexibility to try a wide range of possibilities on top of existing base flavor