New Product Development Officer at Melvins Tea

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

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

Key Responsibilities And Accountabilities
 

• 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.
• 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

• Prototypes development for all product categories where improvements will be derived from such prototypes
• 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.
• Conduct market testing which involves identifying the characteristics that are most important to our customers and test those attributes, repeatedly.
• Liaise with focus groups to collect feedback from the customers in product features
• Commercializing the new products through coordinating promotions and product launches
• Assist in New Product Development, risk assessment, management and mitigation activities.
• Implement process improvements to achieve product quality and productivity.
• Schedule team meetings to discuss about product issues and ideas.
• Perform product inspections to identify and rectify any defects.
• Participate in designing activities and supplier visits to monitor the designing
• Working with cross functional teams to support NPD processes e.g product launches, analyzing sales reports for decision making

Knowledge, Skills And ExperiencePerson Specifications

• 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
• 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