NPD Process that Increases Efficiency and Transparency

Wosana has built a strong position in the Polish beverage market over 30 years of operational activity. The company manages three strategically located production facilities in Andrychów, Turów, and Damnica. Wosana has optimized its product portfolio in the juice, beverage, and spring water segments. The company effectively develops partnerships with retail networks for private label brands, as well as products under the Wosana brand. The organization’s mission remains delivering safe, natural products that support family well-being.

The management team at Wosana recognized an opportunity to optimize their new product launch process. This was particularly critical given that the company typically runs several, or even a dozen, such projects simultaneously. The experience and professionalism of the management team needed to be complemented by a system that would improve information flow, increase transparency, and standardize documentation.

Our goal was to collaboratively develop a modern product development process (NPD) roadmap with the Wosana team. We wanted to leverage the Wosana team’s experience, Innovatika’s expert knowledge, and best practices from the FMCG industry.

We began by analyzing the current situation and the existing new product launch process. This allowed us to define its strengths and weaknesses and gather expectations from all stakeholders. Together with Wosana’s project team, we started mapping out the subsequent process steps. To design the target process, we enriched it with best practices in project management and FMCG industry experience, based on the Stage-Gate model. The logic of this approach perfectly matched the challenge of improving NPD project efficiency. We shifted the most expensive activities to later stages, minimizing potential losses if the project were to be halted. We fine-tuned the process map with detailed responsibilities using a RACI matrix and defined the optimal scope for the NPD project card. We reviewed supporting tools tailored to Wosana’s needs and, after selecting an appropriate solution, designed core templates and guided the team through tool usage to enable practical testing. Ultimately, the tool proved too inflexible and difficult to adapt to Wosana’s work rhythm. However, the newly developed NPD project management principles were immediately implemented.

We developed a complete New Product Development (NPD) process map for Wosana. We defined all stages, milestones, and dependencies between tasks. We assigned responsibilities for individual actions. We created recommendations for project management. Employee satisfaction and NPD project effectiveness increased.

The ability to implement a new process immediately.
Greater transparency with guaranteed constant access for all key stakeholders to project progress and decision information.
The opportunity to continuously improve the process based on regularly collected insights and experiences.

Anyone implementing products may want to do so more efficiently. In that case, it’s worth examining the NPD process, looking for improvements, and strengthening it with good practices.