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Controlling Specification Management

Controlling Specification Management Throughout the Food & Beverage Product LifecycleGet to a Finished Product Faster with Better Supplier Collaboration


Contents

IntroductionChapter 1: The Modern Specification Management Process Chapter 2: Centralizing Supplier CollaborationChapter 3: Harnessing Digital Document ManagementChapter 4: Threading it All Together with Workflows & Status ChangesConclusionAuthors

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Introduction In order to properly create, manage and update product data during all phases of formula-based product development, the specification management process requires tight collaboration between your company’s departments and outside suppliers. This is particularly applicable during the product launch, formulation and packaging phases.

For most companies, collecting data and documents to create accurate specifications is an incredibly decentralized task. Internally, your company’s packaging department may be collecting its own specifications, while the R&D department has its own process and the Innovation team its own questionnaire it sends to vendors…and so on. Furthermore, fields, documents, ingredient statements, weight dimensions, material compositions and more must be continually sourced and updated from your suppliers at set intervals in your PLM process—a series of tasks often completely disconnected from your internal specification management processes.

And then there is your company’s ERP system to think about. This data repository may contain information on many products and vendors. But linking the ERP data to how it is used and modified throughout your product development process proves more challenging without a centralized PLM system. With approval tasks and specification creation compartmentalized within multiple departments, systems and documents, it is almost impossible to ensure that product data and the methods used to obtain it are traceable, visible and compliant throughout your PLM process.

Controlling specification management tasks on the enterprise level—and ensuring product development and launch stays on target—starts with a better supplier collaboration tool. A PLM system connected to a supplier collaboration tool allows you to create one version of the truth when it comes to gathering, maintaining and updating your product data.


Chapter 1: Today’s Enterprise Specification Management Process

Key Elements of the Specification Management Process

The initial and most important step in the specification lifecycle is creating your product formulas. When a project moves from the feasibility stage into product formulation, connecting automated document management, approval workflows and supplier information is necessary for accurate product prototyping, testing and launch.


Chapter 1: Today’s Enterprise Specification Management ProcessGate-Related Workflows• Automated workflows set and facilitate approval tasks and

internal deadlines within each gate of the PLM process—specifically during the Project Scoping & Feasibility, Product. Development, Validation and Pre-Launch stages.

• All documents gathered within each gate are stored and searchable in a centralized repository.

• Status changes set and track effective dates of each specification.

Supplier Collaboration• Suppliers can submit ingredient and packaging data

digitally using a secured portal.• Vendor questionnaire templates can be transformed into

web forms for easy data entry by suppliers.• Triggered emails combined with PLM workflows

prompt suppliers to fill out needed product data.

Document Management & Version Control• Data from supplier questionnaires are auto-populated into

internal specification documents.• Activity panes track the completion of supplier data sharing.• Staff can view, compare and copy specifications for all

different regions and product versions.• Data can be easily shared between Product Innovation,

Packaging, Research & Development, Regulatory, Procurement teams and more.



The Importance of Integrated Supplier Collaboration in Specification Management

Supplier data gathered from every part of the PLM process serve as the building blocks of internal specifications, ensuring accurate, updated and compliant data is used at every moment in the product development process.

Data points collected in questionnaires at the first stage of ingredient specification automatically inform and trigger the next stage of product development—from Trial Recipe to Finished Product.

Having accurate supplier data properly synced in your PLM and ERP system prevents compliance fines and risks, also ensuring your finished product is packaged and shipped with the exact right ingredients based on its location, manufacturing site and more.


How Selerant Facilitates Enterprise Specification ManagementSelerant’s formula-based product lifecycle management software DevEX facilitates a better specification management process by controlling document management, workflows, approvals and vendor data collection throughout these key areas of product formulation. DevEX specification management extends to the following areas:

Sourcing & Ingredient Specs• The Selerant Supplier Collaboration Portal enables staff in

all departments to quickly onboard new suppliers into their PLM system and send web-based forms to digitally collect product data.

• Suppliers can upload documentation and fill out specification questionnaire templates for immediate ingredient updates.

Trial Recipe & Formula Specification• Templates populate material classification fields such as

kosher type, status, GMO source, vegan status, allergens and more, with data gathered from supplier questionnaires.

• Approval workflows track when each department decides to promote a Trial Recipe to a General Recipe.



Chapter 2: Today’s Spec Management Types and ProcessesGeneral Recipe & Formula Specification• Templates populate ingredient specification fields into the

nutrition label, ensuring accuracy in packaging and more.

Site Recipe Formulation• Tracking for different variations of the same ingredient by

centralizing all documents in a material master in one system.• Creation of multiple ingredient statements for different regions

and different nutritional levels by country and language.

Packaging Material Specification • Enabling packaging suppliers to submit specific questionnaires

and view alongside documents gathered during the recipe development process.

Finished Product• Pull data from formula and package specs to create a complete

and accurate finished product specification, including net size, net weight, pallet configurations, etc.

• Push ingredient/recipe data from vendors to a co-packer to create the product.

• Tracking status changes to finished specifications to renew the process when products need to be updated or replaced on the market.


Using Selerant’s Supplier Collaboration Portal to Streamline Data Collection

Supplier questionnaires are the bread and butter of specification management. Yet, supplier data is often gathered and disseminated in manual formats or Excel files--making product data collection slow, difficult and inaccurate within your ingredient, packaging and final product specifications.

The Selerant Supplier Collaboration Portal SPC provides a single interface to connect supplier communication activities to your existing PLM system. Workflows that track approval and product stages can also be extended to trigger requests to your vendors via the portal. Documents and data provided by your vendors electronically are stored alongside internal documents at each stage of product formulation.

With configurable questionnaires and tracked activities, Selerant SPC works with the unique requirements of your many suppliers, enabling you to customize data collection by location, region and ingredient variation—transferring harmonizing that data into specifications across your organization.

Chapter 2: Centralizing Supplier Collaboration



Benefits of Selerant’s Supplier Collaboration Portal• Securely and accurately connect suppliers and vendors into the PLM system to significantly accelerate specification management.• Keep documentation organized by entities associated with one supplier, including multiple facilities, raw materials, co-vendors and more.• Centralize both internal PLM tasks and supplier tasks in a single and easy to adopt interface.• Create industry-standard ingredient and packaging questionnaire templates that can be reused for multiple suppliers.• Set deadlines for supplier tasks and track completion, along with status bar indicators.• Automatically kick off the process for supplier updates on the product lifecycle, such as certificate expiration.


Easily Onboard and Communicate with Suppliers

Maintaining and organizing data for the dozens to hundreds of facilities and ingredient origins used in your specifications can be an ongoing paperwork headache when done manually.

The DevEX system and SCP tool enables you to create objects related to each supplier, including master corporate entities, individual manufacturing locations, warehouses and raw materials vendors, as well as securely collect certificates and other onboarding documents.

When these objects are created, SCP triggers a workflow that pushes the right questionnaire to the right facility. The entire collaboration process is transparent to the user, and is also automated for your administrators.


Warehouses and Raw Materials vendors

Individual Manufacturing Locations

Master Corporate Entities

Collect certificates and other onboarding documents.


Chapter 2: Centralizing Supplier CollaborationCreate and Send Questionnaires to Suppliers

Once supplier objects are created inside the PLM system, Selerant DevEX enables the creation and distribution of associate questionnaire templates to vendors—such as raw materials, facilities and finished goods.

Here’s how the supplier collaboration process works:

• When a new vendor is approved in the system, an email is triggered to the supplier to fill out a questionnaire based on their profile.

• The supplier then receives a link to a questionnaire as a web form within the portal.

• A second workflow sends the completed fields from the supplier back into the DevEX PLM system, updating all related documentation connected to that supplier.

• The administrator reviews the supplier questionnaire information and either requests more information or approves the completed questionnaire.

• Once approved, the data within the questionnaire is automatically populated into that product’s formula, ingredient or package list(s).

The Selerant SCP comes with built-in questionnaire templates common in the food and beverage industry, saving staff time and automatically digitizing your paper-based supplier collaboration.


Track Task Completion

The Supplier Collaboration Portal keeps all tasks on track by providing suppliers and administrators visibility into the status of product data collection.

Supplier ViewSuppliers can see:

• All pending requests from a client.

• Completed questionnaire.

• Documentation provided by the client.

• New or expired certifications that need to be updated.

Administrator View

Internal staff can see:

• Recent materials you have sent or received from suppliers.

• A panel of open workflow activities and tasks.

• Auto-approval options for suppliers you have worked with in the past.

• The frequency of supplier response to emails.

• Available questionnaire templates for single or multiple facility distribution



When thousands of specifications and questionnaires are continually being added and updated in the system from vendors, you need powerful document management in order to pinpoint when and where product updates should be made throughout the product development lifecycle.

Enterprise Search DevEX enables users to search, analyze and compare multiple ingredient statements and specifications for different regions, nutritional levels, countries, suppliers and process gates. Easily drill down to find the data you need to make informed decisions about product updates.

Built-In Auditing Audit trails provide a historical changes to a document, document field, template or questionnaire, creating a repository of vendor communication and specification work completed by Document Check In and Check Out.

Documents, including specifications and ingredients lists, can be checked out of the system for editing, ensuring that you’re working with the most updated version of each document in the system and that multiple staff members aren’t creating multiple versions of the same document.

Version ControlWhen suppliers send new data in questionnaires, the system automatically archives the previous version and keeps a log of versioning of the all documents. The system also tracks Effective Date information for each specification and automates tasks for the entire product lifecycle process at set intervals, ensuring that only the most current specification is being used to build your products.

Chapter 3: Harnessing Digital Document Management


The power of using a dedicated tool for supplier collaboration empowers and completes enterprise specifications management in combination with the background workflow capabilities and status fields within DevEX.

By transforming documentation on raw materials into digital templates, auto-populating that data into specification documents and then routing both items for review and approval, the DevEX system enables all departments to manage specification creation together. Product requirements are firmly and accurately set from the very beginning of the product lifecycle.

Example: Creating an Active Ingredient Specification for Granulated Sugar

A good way to visualize how these tools work in conjunction to move the specification process along across the enterprise is to study one part of the process - the initial gathering of ingredient data. The built-in versioning tool can be applied for every stage of specification management. Versioning is very critical at the early stages of the specification management process, such as when you are gathering product data for an ingredient like granulated sugar.

From the very beginning, different departments can be looped into the process. At a high level, the DevEX systems captures when:

• Marketing (or other department) produces a product brief for a new or updated product.

• R&D determines that raw material information is needed from a vendor.

• Regulatory validates information on specific fields on the raw material object that need to be declared on resulting ingredient and formula documentation—such as religious or dietary restrictions—thereby guaranteeing compliance from the very start of the product lifecycle.

• Procurement creates the master specification, which may only include the need for vendors to only respond to a few necessary fields from the material formula.

• Q&A reviews the ingredient specification.

Chapter 4: Threading it All Together with Workflows & Status Changes



The Selerant DevEX system facilities input, review and approval of raw material information, active specifications and master ingredients specifications from all areas of your business.

Gathering Raw Material Data with Supplier Collaboration


Chapter 4: Harnessing Digital Document ManagementOnce the product brief has been set, the R&D department can create an object in DevEX. Let’s take, for instance, an example of collaboration for the raw material of granulated sugar. These objects are a mixture of attached documents, data fields and folders that organize all data and projects associated with the granulated sugar ingredient.

• The R&D department sets fields, such as religion and dietary data fields, onto the granulated sugar object.

• A supplier questionnaire is sent to a number of granulated sugar vendors with questions relating to those fields via the Supplier Collaboration Portal.

• The workflow auto-populates the answers from the returned questionnaire into the raw material data fields.

• Depending on the data gathered, the R&D department can change the status of the raw material to “Ready” or “Inactive” using a simple field.

• Changing the status can also automatically mark the ingredient data as ready to be included in a Trial Recipe.

2. Auto-Populating Ingredient SpecificationsAt the same time raw material data is being gathered, a granulated sugar ingredient specification is also created in the DevEX system.

Once the raw material data status changes to “Ready,” all of the raw material data is automatically populated into the digital ingredient specification fields.

The specification can be populated with data from additional sugar vendor questionnaires sent through the Supplier Collaboration Portal.

3. Routing for Approval Both raw material objects and ingredient specifications can be routed to a pre-defined list of approvers across departments.The R&D department can simply select a “Submit” option in the system or also select or set a group of reviewers (e.g. Quality Assurance, Procurement and Regulatory)• Reviewers can “Approve” or Route back, and also add

comments onto the specification. • An approval timeline shows which approval tasks have

been created, tracks comments and displays where the specification is in the approval process.


4. Setting an Active Specification Once all reviewers have signed off on the specification, the R&D department can make the specification current using a simply status change field. The final specification process is as follows;

• By selecting the “Apply” status, the specification becomes the most current version in use. This action also makes the underlying raw material data current as well.

• A system of checks and balances within DevEX will indicate if the specification is missing critical data, such as version notes, comments or dietary data fields, before it can be promoted to the most current version.

• The current version automatically replaces any previous versions of the sugar specification. As new information is added or raw material data is changed, specifications can be replaced. In DevEX, only the most accurate, approved data is in use in further stages of the product lifecycle.

• A section of the specification shows both the active/current specifications and any previous versions—providing a full history of specification creation, modification and use. From there and in this example, the granulated sugar ingredient specification can be combined with other ingre-dient specifications to form the first trial recipe…and so on.

These steps can be set and duplicated for every additional stage of formula and recipe creation. Specifications can be created for Formulas, Trial Recipes, General Recipes, Packaging and Finished Goods.

The DevEX system is highly configurable to each company’s internal processes and review steps. DevEX makes it easy to replicate unconnected manual processes in a centralized, automated specification management system for utilization throughout the entire enterprise.


Conclusion An enterprise specification management process that centralizes the collection of supplier data, controls document management and automates the creation and updating of formulas, ingredient lists and final specs with workflows and status changes isn’t a nice-to-have. It is essential component of product development for being competitive and compliant.

Selerant’s formula-based product lifecycle management software and its Supplier Collaboration Portal combine internal tasks and supplier communication to ensure that your entire specification management process is traceable and transparent for all departments involved in bringing your final products to market.


Authors

Michael Frankel is Vice President of Sales, North America, for Selerant Corp. Michael has been with Selerant since 2011 and has over 15 years of highly successful PLM sales experience working with leading process and discrete manufacturing companies to both justify and automate their product development processes through this technology. Specifications Management is always a critical and foundational component of PLM initiatives.

Abhijit Ghawate is a Project Manager and Business Analyst for Selerant Corp. He has 11 years of wide-ranging experience in various roles in the software industry. He started with Selerant in 2009 as an Application Developer and in his eight years with the company, has been involved in implementing PLM projects for companies of all shapes and sizes, each with their unique requirements. He has been closely involved in business analysis, design, solution architecture, development and implementation of PLM software. He has helped several clients formulate a successful PLM implementation strategy with specification management at its core.

Jobi Varghese is Vice President of Professional Services for Selerant Corp. He has 20 years of deep technical experience in Product Lifecycle Management and has engaged with customers in various capacities including process consultant, systems architect and project manager. Jobi has been with Selerant since 2001, and has managed and led the implementation of PLM projects in the food and beverage, specialty chemical and personal care industries. Jobi has also assisted clients in developing successful PLM implementation strategies—with specifications management at the core of best practices.


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