How to reduce the time to market of a new product
Updated October 2026.
In food and cosmetics, a product launched late misses its season, its listing or its retailer tender. Development teams rarely lack effort: time is lost between tasks, waiting for information or redoing work.
Where the time goes
- Waiting for supplier data: specifications, certificates and allergen statements requested late, then retyped.
- Searching for information: the last version of a formula or a specification, spread across files and emails.
- Late surprises: a non-compliant ingredient or an unjustified claim found at validation.
- Sequential approvals: each department validates after the previous one, by email.
- Artwork loops: labels redone after each change of recipe.
Seven ways to launch faster
- Start from a template for each type of project, with tasks, roles and deliverables already defined.
- Run tasks in parallel when they do not depend on each other: packaging, supplier referencing and stability tests can start before the final formula.
- Check compliance from the first trial, not at the end: ingredients, claims and labeling for each market.
- Let suppliers enter their own data in a portal, instead of retyping PDF files.
- Work on a single set of data: formula, specifications, labels and data sheets calculated from the same source, without copies.
- Automate notifications and reminders: each person knows what to do and is reminded when a task is late.
- Measure the time per stage and act on the slowest one.
What it changes
Companies that move product development onto a shared PLM report time savings of around 50 % on design, 80 % on searching for information, 50 % on changes and 65 % on validation.
In beCPG
Projects run on the same data as the products: formulation, specifications, labeling and documents are produced in the project tasks. The Gantt schedule is recalculated as tasks are completed, each actor is notified and reminded, the supplier portal collects supplier data, and dashboards show the average time per stage. Discover project management in beCPG PLM.
