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What Is Specification Management in PLM Software?

In industries like food and beverage, cosmetics, and specialty chemicals, trends shift quickly, and customers expect quality and transparency. Accurate product specifications are vital for delivering reliable goods swiftly.

Specification management software helps manufacturers and retailers create, manage, maintain, and control crucial data throughout the product lifecycle. By ensuring consistent data, end-to-end visibility, and comprehensive control across every attribute of your products, these tools provide a single source of truth where teams can collaborate with confidence. 

Trace One unlocks accurate and efficient collaboration with team members and suppliers to ensure the quality and safety of your products.   

Trace One Spec Management

End-to-end visibility How Does Specification Management Software Work with PLM Systems?

Specification management provides a structured, centralized, and collaborative framework to handle the complex data associated with product development. It accurately documents every aspect of a product—from design and materials to regulatory compliance—and makes that information easily accessible to stakeholders across your business. As a result, you can enhance product quality, streamline operations, and reduce time to market. 

Learn about specification management with Trace One
Trace One Spec Management

Ingredient to label Specification Management Data in PLM Systems

By integrating specification management into your product lifecycle management (PLM) system, you give stakeholders across your organization access to a single, consistent source of information that covers the entire product lifecycle.

Key product information includes: 

  • Materials 
  • Classification 
  • Sustainability tracking 
  • Regulatory requirements 

Key packaging information includes: 

  • Components 
  • Dimensions 
  • Recyclability information 
  • Regulatory requirements 

 

 

Trace One Spec Management

Single Source of Truth Integrated PLM and Spec Management

Connecting specification data with modules throughout your PLM platform ensures different teams can perform their work with the most up-to-date and accurate information possible.
  • Project management software 
    Accurate specification data is relevant to every stage of the new product development and introduction (NPDI) process. Integrating your specification management tool with your project management software provides the visibility every team needs to do their work. 
  • Compliant product development 
    Integrated compliance management tools ensure specifications meet regulatory standards, including safety, sustainability, and quality, by incorporating built-in checks and automated alerts. 
  • Artwork and packaging management 
    By connecting specifications data with artwork management tools, you provide the most up-to-date packaging information, eliminating errors that erode consumer trust and invite risk. 

Benefits of Specification Management Software

Product specification software like Trace One PLM drives quality and safety while enabling rapid collaboration between internal team members and external suppliers. 
Trace One Spec Management

Digitized single source of truth 
Eliminate the need for spreadsheets, PDFs, legacy systems, and unmanageable data formats by transitioning to a centralized, digitized platform. A unified system helps you gather data from diverse sources and consolidate all of your product information in one place. 

End-to-end data management  
Manage data across every stage, from raw materials and ingredients to finished product specifications and packaging. Tools like Trace One PLM handle a wide array of specifications that include product, packaging, raw materials and ingredients, formulas, finished product specifications, and BOMs. 

Comprehensive product specifications 
Streamline how you capture specification data from suppliers to focus on essential elements, including recipes, nutritional information, product claims, packaging details, storage requirements, preparation instructions, and commercial text. 

Accessible storage and organization 
Manage all data around products, suppliers, and production sites. A single pane of visibility simplifies data access and management to enhance efficiency and collaboration across the supply chain.     

Trace One Spec Management

End-to-end project management 
Monitor specifications as they evolve with enhanced visibility into status, validation progress, and modification requests while providing quality managers with clear visibility into supplier details. 

Comprehensive change tracking and version control 
Access a comprehensive history of changes and approvals to maintain compliance through detailed version control and audit trails. Tracking and controlling each step of the project helps you take corrective actions and powers data-driven decisions. 

Streamlined document management 
Centralize document storage to ensure convenient, consistent access to all relevant data. Digital document management and enterprise data searching mean all documents within each gate are secure and discoverable from a centralized repository. 
Trace One Spec Management

Regulatory compliance 
Meet regulatory standards and maintain consistency across every phase of product development. Automated validation checks against regulatory standards help you quickly adapt to changing conditions. Tools like Trace One Regulatory Compliance make sure retailers can capture regulatory data for products and packaging through dedicated interfaces and analytics. 

Standardized data collection formats 
Gather all data necessary for product and packaging compliance in a standardized format. Capture detailed information on substance tracking and classification to meet the EU’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) compliance requirements, including allergens, endocrine disruptors, materials, and more.

Glossary control

Maintain consistency across product data to support rapid research and reporting and minimize artwork errors.

Supplier certification management 

Collect production site certifications from suppliers and track their expiration dates to minimize renewal times. 
Trace One Spec Management

Full product composition visibility 
Oversee each ingredient’s contribution to the final product, including nutritional values, composition, and allergens. Flexible recipe management through enriched list capabilities helps you complete specifications more quickly. 

Automated calculations 
Through automation, you can eliminate manual calculations around ingredient ranks and declaration, nutrition, and a product’s Nutri-Score. 

Proactive troubleshooting 
Quickly identify potential problems with control plans tailored to specific product characteristics and targets. Better identification helps you minimize mistakes, streamline processes, and spot problems. 

Accurate claims management 
Packaging specification software lets you generate artwork and packaging claims through questions, allergen information, commercial text, and nutrition information.  

Packaging copy generation 
Automate packaging copy reporting and generation through integration with labeling software like Trace One’s Artwork Management module. 
Trace One Spec Management
Streamlined supplier integration 
Build supply chain resilience and transform the way you work with external partners by integrating them into the entire lifecycle of your packaging and products. Efficiently collect information from all suppliers across questionnaires, completion, change requests, and validation. 

Enhanced workflows 
Task-driven collaboration includes notifications and reminders to help you interact with suppliers and take corrective actions efficiently. Centralize all product reviews and send precise requests for modification. 
Trace One Spec Management

Data-driven analysis 
Rapidly identify bottlenecks and delays to get a clear view of business-critical situations through key performance indicators (KPIs). Complete visibility ensures teams can continually improve PLM processes. 

Reduced risk 
Identify trends before they become problems, cause delays, and drive brand risk for your business. 

Performance tracking 
Measure and analyze your suppliers’ performance and follow your product's evolutions over time to understand overarching patterns and optimize your work. 
Trace One Spec Management

Consumer and market demands Specification Management Challenges

Specification management is a complicated process with profound effects on stakeholders across your business. Effective product specification software minimizes the challenges that come with creating and managing a wide array of SKUs. 

  • Dynamic market and consumer trends
    Keeping a competitive edge means quickly developing new products to meet ever-evolving consumer demands. 
  • Multiplying SKUs and complex supplier networks
     As both product catalogs and supplier networks expand, managing your product range becomes more complex. 
  • Rapidly shifting regulations 
    To avoid lawsuits, fines, recalls, and a loss of consumer trust, you need to ensure your products respect quality requirements and regulatory compliance standards. 

  • Fragmented data management 
    Poorly integrated systems scatter data across multiple locations, resulting in incomplete information, ineffective version control, and difficulty maintaining consistency and accuracy. 
“Many companies still manage their specifications in Word, leaving those files vulnerable to uncontrolled changes. With Trace One PLM, there’s no question or confusion—our teams and suppliers can count on the PLM as the single source of truth. We add comments directly to the specifications, which allows us to follow up with suppliers. It’s more advantageous than email. A central node of communication makes it possible for all team members to follow the progress of the specifications.” 

- Alexandra Boiteux, Quality Manager, TransGourmet France 

Who Uses Product Specification Management Software?

Product specifications are relevant for every team involved in the PLM process, so a wide spectrum of professionals need access to this data. Integrating this software into your PLM system maximizes collaboration to help teams operate more effectively, building cohesion across different stages of the product journey. 

Research and Development and Product Management

Overcoming data siloes in a collaborative environment helps you meet go-to-market timelines and budget demands. A unified specification management tool drives faster formulation and provides access to the right info at the right time throughout the product lifecycle. By maintaining version control and eliminating redundancies and repetition with a single source of truth, you can optimize costs and meet evolving consumer, market, and regulatory requirements.

Regulatory Affairs

Issues like improper labeling can lead to devastating business outcomes. For example, a consumer might get sick as a result of a mislabeled allergen, or a national regulator could force a product recall, resulting in financial losses and eroding trust in your brand. Comprehensive food specification management software enables real-time compliance checks to avoid these pitfalls. At the same time, effective product data governance ensures you populate labels with accurate information.

Quality Management

Non-compliance with quality standards and certifications can lead to substantial brand damage. Through comprehensive specification management software, you can prevent financial loss due to inaccurate or poor product data by delivering end-to-end visibility into quality management processes. It guarantees that feedback reaches the right people at the right times so every team can address quality issues before they get lost in transmission or passed on to the next stage of production.

Marketing and Product

By integrating specification data management software into your PLM platform, you facilitate input from marketing professionals to product teams. That ensures new products match consumer and market demands through requirements-driven product development.

IT

Digital transformation depends on a mesh of corporate systems that speak to each other effectively. Selecting integrated solutions helps IT unify and consolidate technology, integrating your existing ERP system into your PLM platform and specification management software for seamless product data sharing.

Trace One Spec Management

Why Trace One PLM?

Keep pace with consumer needs by connecting every team to product specification data as part of a cohesive PLM platform. 

Trace One PLM provides an intuitive interface that serves as a single source of truth for all your food and beverage, cosmetic, and chemical specification management needs. Empower your organization with greater visibility and control from initial concept to final product. 

With Trace One PLM you can:

  • Effectively manage a wide range of products throughout their lifecycle and accelerate time-to-market. 
  • Innovate by improving existing products or creating new ones to align with changing market demands. 
  • Reduce errors, streamline workflows, and identify issues with a comprehensive overview of every step. 
  • Seamlessly collaborate with suppliers to create better products and ensure accurate labeling. 
  • Centralize and track all product information, quality requirements, and supplier data in one platform. 
  • Achieve regulatory compliance and meet critical reporting deadlines with ease through integration with Trace One Regulatory Compliance. 

 

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Expert-guided success The Trace One Process

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      Blueprinting

      We guide your teams through fast, effective design workshops to uncover the perfect configuration for your new PLM system.

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      Implementation

      Trace One builds out the PLM system based on your unique requirements. We’ll help you settle into your new workflows and support each team on their piece of the data migration.

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      Validation

      Before launch, we validate the PLM system in your environment based on established use cases and perform detailed testing.

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      Go Live

      The clear and guided Trace One approach works to mitigate risk, nerves and resistance to change. Our experts create a project plan with an eye to minimal downtime as the shift is made from in-development to a live environment.

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