Out-of-the-Box Thinking EPD & Challenging the Status Quo
Led a Global Existing Product Development (EPD) project to develop and bring to market a portfolio of premature infant formula nursette formulations designed to meet expert recommendations for use in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Prematurity is the leading cause of death among children under five, with survivors often facing lifelong health and developmental challenges.
- Accelerate global implementation across North America, Latin America, Europe, and ASEAN to address an urgent market and patient need.
- Maximize formulation harmonization across regions to reduce complexity, improve efficiencies, and minimize development and supply chain costs.
- Challenge the traditional development model, which relied on creating a formulation for a lead market and subsequently adapting it for each additional region.
- Overcome a slow and resource-intensive process that increased development timelines, drove higher costs, and resulted in unnecessary SKU proliferation.
- Balance global standardization with regional requirements, ensuring compliance with local regulatory and market requirements without sacrificing speed-to-market.
- Challenged conventional development practices and implemented a globally integrated approach to accelerate delivery and reduce complexity.
- Rapidly assembled a cross-functional, global team representing all in-scope regions and convened an intensive week-long workshop to align requirements and drive decision-making.
- Assessed and validated regulatory, nutritional, and ingredient requirements across all regions, creating harmonized formulations from the outset rather than adapting them market by market.
- Delivered globally viable prototype formulations in record time, reducing development cycles, minimizing SKU proliferation, and improving speed-to-market.
- Reduced global implementation timelines by two years, accelerating access to critical nutrition products for vulnerable premature infants.
- Achieved significant formulation harmonization, requiring only two formulations to serve 95% of targeted global markets for the flagship premature infant offering.
- Delivered cost savings by consolidating demand into a smaller number of SKUs, reducing manufacturing complexity and lowering COGS.
- Recognized as a breakthrough innovation, receiving formal team recognition and being featured as a “game-changing” initiative in communications with investors.

