Distinguishing between core competencies and essential skills that can be outsourced can be a back-and-forth dilemma for food manufacturers.
Devising new products and getting them onto store shelves as quickly as possible has replaced lowest-cost production as the core competency of many food manufacturers, suggests Burt Young, a food engineer with Lockwood Greene in Cincinnati. As a result, staffing dollars are thrown at food scientists and formulation experts, with a corresponding reduction in in-house engineering.