The possibilities are endless. Your marketing team just came up with the greatest product idea ever (no really, this one will be different), a tried and true ingredient has become too expensive to use, another one just got banned in California – all scenarios that require R&D teams to swing into action and create or modify product recipes. An essential part of the new product development process, in most cases, is the creation of a physical bench product. Often, there will be many iterations of bench product, and for good reasons. From recipe and process validation to raw material assessment and cost analysis, going right through to final compliance, labeling and nutritional confirmation, creating physical product is an indispensable part of R&D.

It can also be, in technical terms, a huge pain in the backside. Time consuming, expensive, and resource intensive, creating and analyzing bench product can be a significant drag on time to market. It typically can’t be skipped, but teams that have been through the process know that slowdowns and complexity can happen at multiple stages. See if any of the following slowdowns sound familiar.