When was the last time a product from the grocery store, convenience store or your local pharmacy wowed you?  Was it the package, how the product performed or like food products or a lotion, was it the product inside.  Was it taste, texture, or what that product promised to do for you: digestive health, allergy relief, smooth skin? 

For companies that develop formulated products, the ‘stuff’ inside is often the kernel of intellectual property.  It is often the ‘thing’ that makes you come back and buy that product again and again.  For example, what is the real difference between Coke and Pepsi?  Consumers have a strong voice in their preferences.  As such, these are both coveted and secret formulas.

 Think about it, every time you go into the grocery store you’re confronted by an array of choices: different products, a variety of packaging choices, sustainability considerations, and price.     And while you are ultimately buying the entire experience, it’s what’s inside the package that really counts.   It’s that experience that determines whether you’ll keep buying it and, as importantly, defines how you’ll talk about it with your friends and family.

Companies in formula-based industries like cosmetics, personal care, pharmaceuticals and others know this well.  At Dassault Systèmes we’ve always done a pretty good job at thinking about the ways in which to design future products and how to best help our customers innovate in more efficient ways and at an accelerated pace.    

We’ve taken the lessons learned over the last 30 years in key industries like automotive, aerospace,  high tech, and applied them to help a variety of the world’s leading companies in new PLM markets likelife sciences and consumer packaged goods. However, while we’ve focused on product simulation and key business processes for data management, packaging design, product simulation and labeling, what about the recipe or formula that actually goes into the box, bottle or tube?

For many of our customers what goes into the packaging is equally, if not more important in the consumer’s purchase decision.  In the world of formulation, the most successful companies are those that are able to take relatively inexpensive raw materials and transform them into a product that the consumer is willing to pay for. In fact, for formula-based industries like cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and consumer packaged goods often the formula IS the product – the kernel of their intellectual property. 

With such an important role to play in a company’s success you’d think that formula design and management would be an integral part of a company’s product lifecycle management.

Formula design and management has been handled by formulators and chemists who have often managed the data separately from other key functions like package design, engineering and manufacturing who typically use technology to support their work. Formulators don’t just make one version of a formula either.  They create a core formula and then make modifications based on varying manufacturing capabilities and regional/local regulatory requirements.  For global organizations, managing these regional regulations makes their jobs increasingly complex.

What does this mean practically?  Let’s take suntan lotion; a manufacturer may have to produce more than 10 different formula variations of the same product to satisfy all of the health and safety requirements. That’s not to mention the different packaging and labeling requirements as well. Managing all of this is extremely time consuming and expensive.

This is why Dassault Systèmes’ acquisition of Enginuity PLM, announced last week, has the potential to change the way that formula-based companies manage their business and interact with their consumers.

As a leader in formula management, Enginuity has a strong track record of working with some of the world’s leading companies like Procter & Gamble, Merck and Revlon to tie formulation back into the business.  For the first time Dassault Systèmes customers will be able to manage formula design as another key business process and importantly directly integrated in the broader enterprise product lifecycle. 

This will enable companies in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, personal care and other business segments to innovate better, faster and smarter than ever before.  This is a game changer!

To learn more follow this link or if you have specific comments or questions please contact me directly at rosemary.grabowski(at)3ds.com.

Best,

Rose

ENOVIA Market Strategy