Job description

Department: Production

Position reports to: Quality Control/ Tea Master

Job Purpose Summary: The purpose of this role is to assist with the end to end coordination of the new product development, enhancing/improving the already existing products, introduction of the new product to the market, gathering customer feedback to enhance the products and monitoring their consumption in the market.

Objective:

1. End to end coordination of new product development processes
2. Foster cross departmental liaison in the new product development process
3. Enhance go to market lead times for new products

Key Responsibilities and Accountabilities:

1. Idea generation; tasked with creating and tracking ideas in new product development e.g. new product lines, product line extensions, repositioning, cost reduction measures and improving/ revising existing products.

2. Conduct market research for the new product creation process through;

• Monitoring and forecasting marketing and sales trends
• Measuring the effectiveness of marketing programs and strategies
• Devising and evaluating methods for collecting data, such as surveys, questionnaires, opinion polls and data analysis.
• Gathering data on consumers, competitors, and market conditions
• Analyzing data using statistical software
• Interpreting complex data and findings into understandable tables, graphs, and written reports
• Preparing reports and present results to clients and management 

3. Prototypes development for all product categories where improvements will be derived from such prototypes

4. Feasibility analysis/Concept testing through different methods such as surveys (and sometimes qualitative methods) to evaluate consumer acceptance of a new product idea prior to the introduction of a product to the market.

5. Conduct market testing which involves identifying the characteristics that are most important to our customers and test those attributes, repeatedly.

6. Liaise with focus groups to collect feedback from the customers in product features

7. Commercializing the new products through coordinating promotions and product launches

8. Assist in New Product Development, risk assessment, management and mitigation activities.

9. Implement process improvements to achieve product quality and productivity.

10. Schedule team meetings to discuss about product issues and ideas.

11. Perform product inspections to identify and rectify any defects.

12. Participate in designing activities and supplier visits to monitor the designing

13. Working with cross functional teams to support NPD processes e.g product launches, analyzing sales reports for decision making

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

• Bachelor of Degree in Food science
• At least 3 years’ relevant experience in an F.M.C.G company.
• Strong knowledge/understanding of consumer industry and behavior, market dynamics and requirements
• Experienced in analyzing large amounts of data and consumer trends
• Ability to think critically and creatively
• Working knowledge of Microsoft office applications
• Strong business acumen

Person Specifications

• Excellent coordination and people skills
• Strong interpersonal, communication, organization and follow-through skills
• A passionate, self-motivated, energetic, creative and enthusiastic team play who is change oriented
• Build trust, drive execution, foster innovation, focus on customer, solve problems creatively and demonstrate high integrity
• Proactively establish and maintain effective working team relationship with all support departments
• Must thrive on challenge

Key Success Factors

• Excellent Data Analysis
• Effective market and consumer behavior research
• End to end coordination of NPD process stages
• Self-starter and can work under minimal supervision