Innovation of risk assessment model for new food product development project

Abstract

New product development (NPD) is widely recognized as an important source of being a competitive advantage. It can bring considerable returns to an organization but can also be considered a risky process, such as making wrong decisions in the project selection or suffer consequences from using inexperienced project teams. This study aims to develop a risk management model to help NPD teams in managing risks with their projects. The conceptual framework is developed from three sources of publications; systematic literature review of academic research during year 2002-2012, the project management body of knowledge from a professional association and the international standards related to risk management. The model consists of risk identification and the risk analysis process to use for the prioritization of risk factors. Thirty-nine risk factors were identified during the study and the risk breakdown structure (RBS) for food NPD with twenty risk categories have been developed and used for risk identification. The model has been validated by four case studies of NPD projects in the food industry of Thailand. The major risks found in these case studies were the quality of raw materials, trade barriers for export, understanding of customer requirements, inconsistency of raw material costs, communication problems between R&D and the manufacturing team, NPD team knowledge in project management, human resource constraints and product formulation for scale-up.

Refined risk assessment models have been used to develop risk assessment tool, consisting of risk identification by RBS and a risk checklist, and risk analysis by fuzzy inference systems. Some suggestions for risk response strategies have been studied and discussed in this research. This integrated tool can be further developed and commercialized as suggested in a business plan to use by NPD teams as a roadmap and process work-flow for risk management of a NPD project in the food industry. The user acceptance test for prototype of a risk assessment tool from research showed results of a 90.5% acceptance rate by users in the NPD team.