Product modelling in the seafood industry

The paper addresses the aspects of Concurrent Engineering (CE) as a means to obtain integrated product development in the seafood industry. It is assumed that the future New Product Development (NPD) in seafood industry companies will shift from being retailer driven and reactive to be more company driven and proactive to comply with the increasing competition, in such a way that the fish processor issues new products covering both the current and especially latent future consumer demands. This implies a need for new systematic approaches in the NPD as procedures and tools, which integrate assessments, speed up the process and ensure a constant renewal of the seafood products. The objective, therefore, is to estimate the suitability of the CE, and especially CE through product modelling, in the seafood industry as a means to obtain an integration of the entire chain, i.e., a business and market based integration obtained by the CE approach and tools. It is described how the knowledge and information of a seafood product can be modelled by using object oriented techniques.