Digital Supply Chain Green Thursday – SAP Recipe Development
Thank you very much for joining us in this article of the Digital Supply Chain Green Thursday blog series. Every Thursday we will together take a closer look at one of the SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions and how they contribute to sustainability in supply chains all over the world. Have fun in following the blog, we invite you to get in touch with us and feel free to share the blog posts among your peers. Here you can find last week’s article about SAP Intelligent Product Design and ensuring sustainability through requirements management and colla....
Customers demand more information
Whenever I don’t need to rush through the supermarket, I observe different kind of people shopping for groceries. The student with a passion for fitness, comparing the amount of protein in different kinds of yoghurt, a mother checking together with her daughter whether the chocolate is fair trade and a father reassuring himself that there are no nuts in the cake. Over the last years customer demand more and more information about the ingredients in the products they buy as they continue to learn and inform themselves about nutrition and want to make an informed decision to buy a product. This is sustainability in a very direct form, as it directly focuses on the impact on the health of people. It also empowers the customers to initiate a market-swift towards sustainability by their buying-decision.
Companies need to provide information
Another reason for a clear and reliable display of ingredients on the product packaging is even more vital: An increasing number of people suffering from food allergies heavily depend on a correct description of ingredients. This kind of information is even more important when it comes to pharmaceuticals, where pharmacists, doctors and patients need reliable information to prevent potentially harmful reactions with other medication or allergies. Therefore, regulatory bodies demand detailed and reliable information and development processes before granting market access to products.
For companies this is a huge challenge as they need to assure compliance already when the recipes are developed, ensure the correct transcription of the designer recipe to the manufacturing bill of material and need to know what a change within regulations means for the product portfolio.
Usage of proven knowledge to streamline development process
The powerful SAP Recipe Development solution can support companies in the process industry to deliver on the compliance and information request as well as streamlining the development process so that companies can react to market demands in a flexible manner.
The development process can be seen as a set of decisions being made and evaluated within a recipe development team. Therefore, a data basis is needed that describes the raw materials which will be used within the recipe. With the recipe finding feature, developers using the SAP Recipe Development can easily compare the newly developed recipe to already existing recipes or even go a step further take them as a basis (
have a look at this video). This allows the development team to leverage insights from the production experiences of existing recipes. Like this, proven compositions and even cost estimates can be taken into consideration in early stages of the product lifecycle.
Collaboration is a key feature when it comes to efficient development processes. Input from various stakeholders are the basis for good decision-making without bad surprises in the future process – where every change can get very expensive easily. From the selection of raw material ingredients, formula definition and the detailed definition of process steps do not only require a consistent data basis but also tools for easy collaboration as for example provided by the
SAP Intelligent Product Design solution.
Checking compliance during the whole process
The information of
SAP S/4HANA for product compliance solution (
have a look at my blog article) on regulatory demands can be used as a basis for rules which are constantly checked. This way, compliance conflicts appear at a stage where a correction can be done rather cheaply. Additionally, customer demands like increased sustainability can be written down in additional rules to ensure a product that is fitting the customer needs. Based on the structure of SAP Recipe Development pharmaceutical compliance can be ensured up to the standards of an Investigator Medicinal Product Dossier (IMPD) or the regulations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Visibility is the key to maximum efficiency
Being able to leverage experiences and verify the compliance right away is a huge benefit in avoiding mistakes. Like this, potentially horrible effects for customers can be avoided and additionally, upmost flexibility can be generated in order to react on shorter development circles. On the one hand downstream visibility is very important, meaning that every important information is available from development, manufacturing and marketing to sales. On the other hand, upstream visibility can bring great benefits as well. With SAP Recipe Development developers get notifications when changes to the recipe are made during the transcription into a manufacturing Bill of material – a significant step where mistakes can happen. By having discrepancies between the developed recipe and the manufacturing Bill of material checked by the development team, problems in compliance or the final product can be avoided before they happen.
Combination of information to leverage full potential
SAP Recipe Development is a solution that can be used as a single-source of truth during the whole process from idea to manufacturing – streamlining the time to market while providing consistent data to avoid misunderstandings. Having all this information at one place allows important insights already at early stages, a holistic compliance assessment and impact assessments to support a sustainable decision making. Also, stakeholder requirements which are written into rules can be constantly checked with a reliable result, as all information is at one place. Reach out to your SAP contact or have a look at the
solution website to get further information and how to apply them for your business.
With total visibility about the changes which are made throughout a product lifecycle, problems can be avoided, and reliable information can be provided.
Only if a company has true insights about the impact their products have on environment and people, sustainable decisions can be taken. By the company and by the customer in the store.
I hope you found this blog post helpful and interesting. Please make sure you follow me to not miss any future blog posts in this series and stay informed about how a Sustainable Supply Chain is supported by SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions! Feel free to have a look at my earlier posts as well:
DSC Green Thursday: At the end of every tunnel there is a light - will it be a green one?
DSC Green Thursday: SAP S/4HANA for product compliance -“If you think compliance is expensive – try ...
DSC Green Thursday: SAP Intelligent Product Design – Too many cooks spoil the broth, or not?
