The interest in more local and European manufacturing is not new for several reasons. Besides obvious political and ideological drivers, manufacturers have seen big swings in transportation costs and supply chain disruptions during the past years. Meanwhile, China’s labor cost has risen, along with Western awareness of sustainability and social responsibility. As a result, some appliance manufacturers are considering relocating their manufacturing back to Europe, where they’ll benefit from higher standards, closer proximity to customers, and more stable political and legal systems.

As you navigate this transition, ensuring that your product’s journey from idea to industrialization is seamless and efficient is crucial. To safeguard a consistent quality and effective operation during the industrialization phase, you’ll need a trusted partner to guide you through every production step:

• Supplier management: selecting a manufacturer with the right expertise and facilities to deliver consistent, long-term production quality.
• Manufacturer audit: through rigorous audits, potential manufacturing partners are reviewed to meet the key criteria for your project’s success.
• Testing and precertification: setting up and implementing comprehensive testing throughout the entire product development cycle, from conception to qualification, so your product meets all necessary standards before it hits the market.
• Quality and technical file: specific product specifications, work instructions, maturity grids, and validation documents will guarantee quality at every production stage. 
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning: cutting-edge technology to optimize sustainable production processes, and reduce waste and energy consumption, all while maximizing uptimes.

More and more, product and device manufacturers are showing a growing preference for EU-made components and goods. Why? It’s about avoiding the challenges often associated with ‘Made in China’ products, such as quality concerns, long shipping distances, rising travel costs, and limited control over production processes. The tips in this perspective are based on the hands-on experience of our consultants during recent projects, offering valuable insights to help manufacturers adapt to this growing trend.

The post Reshoring revisited: manufacturing devices in Europe appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

The post Reshoring revisited: manufacturing devices in Europe appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

Where product innovation meets manufacturing

Applying design-for-manufacturing (DFM) principles in your product development process will significantly enhance the efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and overall quality of your products. Here’s the million-dollar question: how do you design a product for manufacturing? How do you design a product that ensures a seamless transition from final prototype to mass production?

For maximum efficiency in manufacturing and minimal production costs, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of how design choices influence these aspects. The product’s shape, for example, has a significant impact on the cost of the injection molding and thus on the total manufacturing cost. DFM includes: simplifying product designs, minimizing the number of parts, standardizing components, and selecting materials that are easy to work with.

Securing success: collaborative design synergy with manufacturers

DFM aims to bring all relevant key players together as early as possible in the design phase. The further along you are in the manufacturing process, the more expensive it becomes to make changes to your design. So early collaboration with designers, engineers, manufacturing partners and others is crucial to integrating manufacturability considerations into the product design. It will enable you to mitigate risks like supply chain disruptions, inflation, and material and labor shortages, while it also facilitates the creation of easily manufacturable designs. Whether your manufacturer operates locally or internationally, regular cross-functional meetings play a pivotal role in identifying potential challenges and aligning design decisions with manufacturing capabilities.

The impact of manufacturing on design and the transformative potential of innovation © Verhaert

Geographical manufacturing: rethinking the location game

Over the past few decades, many appliance manufacturers moved production to Asian hotspots, especially China. Why? The promise of lower labor costs, fewer environmental rules, and a massive market playground. Of course, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing. They’ve hit a few bumps, like rising shipping costs, dips in product quality, intellectual property headaches, tricky trade relationships, and increasing geopolitical tensions.

Given these hurdles, some manufacturers are rethinking their location game. By bringing production back to Europe, they’re looking to tap into top-notch standards, be closer to customers, and enjoy more political and legal stability. Plus, let’s not forget, that choosing the right manufacturing spot before and during the design for manufacturability process is a game-changer. It’s not just about cutting costs, it’s about nailing that perfect product-market fit. Including geographical factors in your DFM strategy can be the secret sauce to your product’s financial and market success.

Curious about the great manufacturing relocation shuffle? Stay tuned for our upcoming perspective in which we’ll explore the tug-of-war between Europe and China!

The post To successfully launch new products, design-to-manufacturing is gold appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

The post To successfully launch new products, design-to-manufacturing is gold appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

However, the process isn’t easy and requires a serious and dedicated approach with accredited laboratories and notifying bodies. In addition to analyzing benefits, risks, strengths and weaknesses, we can lead your emissions filter project through each phase and with multiple international partners, focusing on the overall product objectives set.

Emission regulations in FMCG

Safety & perception

Emission management cannot be taken lightly. In countries around the world emission limits are rising as awareness of health and safety is rising. Regulatory limits for both work and public spaces are increasingly more strict, and make no mistake thinking western countries set the trend! It could become an expensive exercise if you think you can to tackle countries outside of Europe in a later stage. Even for in-home units or products that have no regulatory limits but do emit odorous compounds, a screening test campaign is advised. The wrong combination of odorous compounds could mean the difference between the main act or the side-kick of the show.

Emission groups

Air pollution emissions can be divided into different groups depending on their characteristics. Each type has a different impact on health and pollution. A good understanding of the various compound groups is needed to analyze the root cause of an emitted compound, and subsequently filter the emissions.

Volatile organic compounds
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) are organic gases that exist in the gas phase at room temperature. Most components that have an odour are VOCs, yet not all VOCs are odorous. Some have a negative health impact, while others are polluting the environment. A lot of VOCs are biologically generated by plants, animals or micro-organisms.

The most important, human-generated, sources of these VOCs are solvents (paint, ink, etc.), bio- and fossil fuels and biomass combustion. Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOC) is a metric often used to describe the general VOC performance of a process or device. A selection of the VOCs interact with the measurement device and give an indication of the general presence of VOCs.

TVOC is expressed as an equivalent of a certain compound such as propane or isobutylene. Since not all VOCs are taken into account with TVOC measurements, a verification on compound-level must always be made when interacting with compound-level regulations. It is, however, a good metric to make relative comparisons and performance assessments, and is itself a regulated value in certain countries.

Inorganic compounds
In general, inorganic compounds are odourless. Examples of volatile inorganic compounds include NO, NO₂, ozone, SO₂, CO, CO₂, etc. Some of these compounds impact health and environment and are thus regulated.

Particulate matter
Particulate matter (PM) consists of microscopic solid or liquid particles suspended in the air. Particulate matter can be found in various forms such as smoke, pollen, smog, dust, vapour and – topically – bacteria and viruses. Depending on the size of the particles, they can be harmful when inhaled. Small particles have the ability to penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream, and can cause respiratory diseases, cancer and heart attacks. Aside from entering the lungs of living creatures, particulate matter suspended in the air can create extremely hazardous situations if the particulate matter is flammable. A mixture of air and oil droplets or fine wood dust only needs a minor spark to create a huge explosion.

PM is categorized in different size levels, indicated by their maximum diameter in µm. PM10 is known as coarse particles and consists of all particles with a diameter lower than 10 µm. PM2.5 is fine dust and PM0.1 ultrafine dust. Note that PM10 includes both fine and ultrafine dust.

Strict regulations exist on PM10 and PM2.5 and PM levels are continuously monitored, especially in urban or industrial locations. When particulate matter limits are exceeded, smog alarms often go into effect and people are encouraged to stay indoors, wear masks and vehicle speed limits are activated to reduce fine dust emissions. The European Air Quality Index includes PM10 and PM2.5 to assess the air quality throughout the EU and can be consulted online in real-time.

Download the perspective to continue reading about the regulations, emission analysis & know-how of air pollutants.

Looking for solutions to innovate?

Leave us your email and get in contact with Paul Poelmans, Business Development Manager Solutions ‘Smart FMCG & Consumer’, to help you with your innovation process.

The post Regulations on emissions & filter technology in FMCG appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

The post Regulations on emissions & filter technology in FMCG appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

Appliance manufacturers are betting on the next big innovation linked to the emerging hot trends. Yet, making a match of appliance innovations to consumption trends is not a straightforward comparison. Not all consumption and consumer trends present an innovation opportunity to appliances.

Consumption trends become more adventurous. There is a lot of experimentation, pop-up, customization and experience induced by increased traveling, TV shows and social media channels. Yet, this is so permanently impermanent. Always changing. It is often a brief hype of a certain taste sensation that no appliance can manage to capture in a profitable way. It is hard to hit the mainstream market before the next taste experiment has taken over the minds of consumers. Do you still remember the short life of frozen beer foam and related appliances? It was gone before many of you noticed it … some appliance investments were wasted along the way.

The growth of the cocooning trend keeps the appliance manufacturers persistently interested to develop the dream appliance that will be placed right in the middle of consumers` kitchens. There are ever more efforts put in the R&D of new functionalities, more convenience, and intelligence. It is directed towards appliances that could “do more” or “enhance quality & experience” of well-known beverage or food products. At Verhaert/Masters in Innovation, we did a market- and patent-study for the cold beverage industry (latest edition 2012 – 2017). The set of appliances that offer more variety and more custom-made beverages constitutes an important part of the innovation landscape today (20%). Moreover, we noticed that in this category there were ~ 3 times more patents than new appliance launches. Thus, a large market activity might still come.

Among other key trends, we cannot skip mentioning the digital trend. Appliances are no exception there. The digital connected appliances are coming up to please the consumers offering them remote interfaces and additional intelligence along with more control, more information and more interaction. These appliances will work with a variety of promises targeted at different consumer segments. First of all, for those who want to have everything digitally connected while cocooning at home. Secondly, for those who want to co-create their food & beverage experience in service centered horeca markets and, finally, for those who want to make a well informed decision and even get an advice matching their individual needs and believes (e.g. healthy, quality…).  Yet, similar to “connected home” this appliance trend can be expected to explode within the next 5 years.  Obviously, the digital trend will similarly also hit on trade and off trade with the promises of supply chain efficiency and more on-demand logistics.

Download the perspective to read more

Please enter your email to download the perspective and read the next two chapters.

The post Appliance innovation in food & beverage appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.

The post Appliance innovation in food & beverage appeared first on Verhaert Masters in Innovation.