A novel mesoscale modelling and simulation system of consumer visual assessment of washing results -LaundryVisualSim™
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Background Consumer products business is really about winning positive consumer experiences created by personal and home care products and foods. Successful products in this highly competitive market are offering improved sensory experiences to demanding consumers whom perceive product benefits easily and consistently. But nowadays competition is fierce, with an accelerated commoditisation of products and services, increasing price wars, and shrinking profit margins. The executives number one concern "sustained and steady top-line growth," can not possible be supported by existing low-productive innovation models. Today development and product introduction efforts in the consumer products industry are urged to accelerate the pace of innovation, with different cost structures, in a different time frame, being collaborative with external sources, and more importantly, are compelled to design products and technologies that offer superior perceived consumer value in line with benefits delivered by brands. In short, R&D has to develop affordable products/technologies with the ability to improve sensory experiences in consumer terms, fast and with less money, i.e. to develop better and cheaper products with a systematic focus on productivity. But, is that possible? how to execute this? ....That is the R&D challenge!! Here is when computer-based technologies become real something that appears just inspirational wishes or boring rhetoric. The answers are coming from the world of the virtual reality, from the 'in silico' world, thanks to the application of affordable new computational modelling and simulation systems to consumer sensory experiences and materials surface properties. Computer-based technologies now have more than ever, the potential to overcome conventional costly and lengthy 'in vivo' and 'in vitro' R&D practices with the great advantage that include simulation of consumer sensory responses. The trend is to explore digitally and validate physically, and it is expected, by several business managers, that as much as 90% of consumer products R&D will be done in virtual world with the remainder being physical validation of results and options. DETERTEC, after mastering for more than a decade conventional R&D technologies, launched mid 2005 under the name of LaundryVisualLab, a new virtual visual consumer experience, one of the virtual realities that consumer product industry needs, rested on a novel modelling and simulation system of the visual consumer perception of benefits, when products are used at actual environments or market realities. A disruptive computer-based technology which is driving innovation in the way that consumer's eyes really see.
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A New Tool for Laundry Products Virtual
R&D. Originally launched as LaundryVisualLab on mid 2005, now LaundryVisualSim is a modelling and simulation system that predicts the benefits perceived by consumers when they assess visually the washing results. The benefits predicted by the system lie in the area of cleanliness and whiteness perception, which are the basic parameters in the consumer mind, to sustain that some apparel or home fabrics is 'ready to reuse'. Benefits predicted are interrelated with all the critical variables like: visual scenarios, consumer preferences and abilities, test fabrics, washing and drying conditions, and products and technologies. By this way the final output of the system is a map that shows where benefits can be expected, i.e. with which test fabrics, under what sort of washing/drying conditions, with which product and technology, under what type of visual scenarios, and for what type of consumers. What DETERTEC's 'in silico' approach can do is to virtualise all elements that inside on consumer visual experiences. These can be grouped in two components, on the one hand the washing results, that means the surface properties of washed fabrics, and on the other, the consumer assessment, that means cleanliness and whiteness perceptions. Following these lines, the LaundryVisualSim system has two independent but interrelated modules: the Washing Result Module and the Visual Assessment Module. WASHING RESULT MODULE: virtual fabrics, virtual washing /drying process, virtual products/technologies.
VISUAL ASSESSMENT MODULE: virtual visual scenarios, virtual consumers.
Both modules are a large collection of interrelated scripts under JMP 6.0 software (SAS Institute). By this way a full integration with SAS internal data managements system is possible, as well as software scalability, extensibility, and integration depends on JMP/SAS current level of usage. Performance/Validation Radiation transfer models and fluorescence emission models have been an active field of research in different industries an academia in the last century. Recent developments in the field of photonics capable to conduct absolute measurements of radiance of luminescent and non-luminescent fabrics, under actual visual environments, have brought the opportunity to validate and correct models. Validation is supported not only by direct experimentation conducted at DETERTEC, but also by an extensive bibliography (more than 2,000 bibliographic references) on the area. Additionally, close contacts with academia, societies, and research committees in the field reinforces the implementation of updated algorithms in the system. Supported by more than 30 years of developments, colour appearance models have replaced basic colorimetric procedures, to become a more robust system to quantify appearances at real visual scenarios. But vision science is a dynamic field in several industries, academic laboratories, and societies, in accordance with that DETERTEC's system includes regular updates of such developments. Conventional validated cleanliness and whiteness models are supported by the system as well as new customer-relevant customised new non-linear models with higher correlation with consumer responses. Mathematical computations in the visual module are also supported by more than 3,000 bibliographic resources. Finally, the system has been validated in reference to 'in vivo' experimentation using modern photonics techniques to collect surfaces radiance capable to reach consumer's eyes at actual visual relevant scenarios, as well as in reference to actual consumer responses under the same realities. DETERTEC ample 'in vitro' experience in the area has constituted the frame of reference to obtain sound predictions. JMP™ is a trade mark of SAS, Cary, NC, USA. www.jmp.com
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Benefits and Features The consumer industry intention to offer brands that deliver value to people's live, which is the final purpose of the consumer products industry, have focused the R&D efforts on consumer value, a complex reality specially if the challenge is envisaged from a global perspective with a very diverse consumer population with dynamic changing needs. Conventional R&D in vivo and in vitro technologies have showed critical limitations in terms of time and cost, trying to match that global changing consumers. This has opened the door to in silico R&D approach, which offers rapid and predictive methods of investigation that empowers the users to increase efficiency and productivity across consumer products and development pipeline. Using virtual elements, in silico research simulates experiments in a computer, rapidly testing what would likely take months or years in the field or in the lab. A substantial increment of experimental efficiency and a broader and deeper exploration of solutions and new products, are probably the most important benefits of modelling and simulation systems applied to the laundry market. Washing and drying experiments according to several different market realities, using numerous products/technologies, means a lot of time and money. On the other hand, collecting relevant consumer responses from different market realities transform some specific research in a very lengthy and costly effort. The use of simplistic procedures with several assumptions, to match time and money constrains, have proved to be very risky and the first step to market failures. In front of that, it is evident the tremendous benefit of a scientific and serious in silico procedures like LaundryVisualSim, which is a large-scale, quantitative, model and simulation system that broadly include all elements and interactions present on complex visual consumer responses at real laundry market conditions. It models and simulates an extensive set of realities, to serve the needs of a very diverse consumer population quickly and very cost effectively, so they have the potential to replace some costly not-consumer-relevant current R&D practices and to guide few consumer-relevant experiments in more fruitful directions, delivering value to the entire organisation. Besides that, other benefits of LaundryVisualSim are:
In sum: DETERTEC's novel modelling and simulation system is offering unparalleled advantages on cost structures, timeframes, and consumer relevancy: a disruptive computer-based technology.
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