WH107 New Product Development Manager

Duties and Responsibilities

• Creates and manages the new product development pipeline portfolio, to ensure successive annual roll-outs of value-added profitable products, to achieve 5-year plan growth targets.
• Collaborates cross-functionally to drive the Customer to Concept process to bring new products to market.
• Identifies marketing opportunities by analyzing and defining the total market, market share, competitor market share, and available market share by product market.
• Provides leadership and support for the design, development, refinement, and implementation of products by initiating research to identify consumer needs; develop new products to meet consumer needs; research consumer acceptance of products; work with manufacturing to identify packaging improvements, identify co-pack opportunities; develop introductory market programs to introduce new products; and lead status meetings to drive programs or new product initiatives to market. Periodically presents project updates to the leadership team.
• Develop, maintain and update new product development “Concept to Customer” process to ensure a group of new concepts/products are available to be introduced and commercialized on an annual basis to include:
• Initiate and continue new concepts/products “Ideation” activities. Activities to include:
• Initiate and continue new concepts/products “Funnel to Focus” activities. Activities to include:
• Champion prioritized new concepts/products through the “Stage Gate” development process.
• Handle all aspects of taking successful new product concepts through commercialization.
• Where appropriate, develop an introduction team with members from key functional areas to insure a coordinated and successful introduction.
• Responsible for Performance Evaluation Analysis.
• Handle all customer specific requests and brand line extension activities within Retail and FoodService
• Maintain ongoing communication with Packaging, Procurement, Manufacturing and Engineeringto insure a thorough understanding of emerging new ingredients, packaging and manufacturing technology. Incorporate this learning into new product development process.
• Assist VP of Sales & Marketing in providing timely communication between Marketing, Field Sales and the Broker Sales Force. Topics to include but not limited to syndicated data results promotional sell sheets, program updates and sales collateral materials.
• Serve in cross-functional roles & responsibilities in support of corporate objectives
• Champion the identification, development and analysis of the project justification for capital projects related to cost savings, product improvements and new production capabilities tied to new product introductions.