Final assessment and evaluation of the new food product

The new product affects the company's product mix. It may increase sales in one product area and decrease sales in another, but hopefully it will increase the total sales of all products.

Product evaluation is conducted for two main reasons: 1) to ensure product follows relevant standards, and 2) to identify and remove manufacturing or design defects.

There are two things need to be discussed in the final evaluation; the quality of the product that have been designed and made, and the process went through while designing and making it.

How successful of the final products? Comment on things like:
*How it compares with the original intentions
*How well solves the original problem
*The function, nutrition and price of the ingredients that been used
*Food safety issue
*The results and outcome of sensory evaluation
*Design of packaging
*What’s the opinion of potential customer on this new product. Is it the new product meeting consumer demands and sensory attributes.
*Experts opinion
*Whether it could be manufactured cheaply enough in quantity to allow profit
*The ways in which it could be improved
*How to control and ensure the quality of the product
*The used of IT system to assist the production of the new product

Because the success of a new product depends on many variables, developing new products can be a complex and risky business activity, yet vital for product market growth and gaining competitive advantage.
Final assessment and evaluation of the new food product

Developing Preliminary Ideas of Food

Physical design
Food Design can be considered as Design applied to food and eating. Design with Food is the design that melts, swells, blows, foams and reassembles food as a raw material, transforming it to create something that did not exist before in terms of flavor, consistency, temperature, color and texture.

Images of the product could be produced using a simple graphics program. New software from the food industry could photographs of products that have been designed before manufacture them.

Nutrition
Nutrition has been defined as food at work in the body. Nutrition includes everything that happens to food from the time it is eaten until it is used for various functions in the body. Modeling of the energy and nutrients provided by the product can be tested and modified easily.

Cost
Likely cost of new products can be modeled using spreadsheet. Different ingredient costs can be modeled quickly and easily allowing the technologist to see the consequences of the design ideas. A detailed cost analysis should be made prior to manufacture. The two types of costs to consider include fixed costs and variable costs. Annual fixed costs are those that will not change in any one year, regardless of the level of production.

Sensory
Diagrams showing the proposed sensory attributes of the products can be produced using a spreadsheet. These could be in the form of a radar or a pie-chart, depending on the type of test performed, e.g. preference or discrimination.
Developing Preliminary Ideas of Food