Breaking the Mould:
Revolutionising CPG with
Composable
Manufacturing
As consumer demand becomes increasingly dynamic, CPG brands are struggling to bring new innovative products to market at speed. This is because the way brands make things is stuck in the 18th, 19th, 20th century, despite the technological innovations occurring across distribution, marketing, and sales.
Atelier is pioneering a new way of making things: Composable Manufacturing. This manufacturing method benefits CPG brands, consumers, manufacturers, and other supply chain partners.
Under centralised management, physical manufacturing resources from across the globe are aggregated into a cloud network and virtualised as shoppable manufacturing components that can be customised in real-time. This is executed by leveraging graph database technology, semantic enrichment, digital twins, and video game dynamics — technologies that have not yet been applied to the CPG manufacturing space.
Composable manufacturing enables brands to:
Drive innovation in product development by harnessing transparent, traceable, and accurate manufacturing data from previously disparate datasets.
Unlock emergent efficiencies that foster antifragile supply chains, price competitiveness, and rapid development.
Enhance creative outcomes for product development at a reduced cost, increasing the competitive advantage for brands of all sizes.
Understand the true cost of NPD with exhaustive visibility into primary, secondary, and tertiary supply chains regarding financial, ecological, human, and ethical costs.
Improve consumer trust and loyalty through accurate and transparent ESG reporting and reliable product availability.
Atelier’s method of composable manufacturing will be a transformative force within CPG and beyond, finally aligning the product development and manufacturing landscape with today’s brands, consumers, investors, and manufacturers.
In an ever evolving and competitive market, consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands are constantly seeking innovative ways to differentiate their products, create unique value propositions for their customers, and overcome challenges with supply chains and inventory management. Simultaneously, consumer needs are becoming increasingly dynamic.
A 2022 survey by Accenture found that:
- 64% of consumers wish companies would respond faster to meet their changing needs.
- 60% of consumers say their priorities keep changing as a result of everything going on in the world.
- 88% of executives think their customers are changing faster than their businesses can keep up.
But whilst brands are able to efficiently identify changes in their consumers’ needs, their ability to respond to those changes with the necessary speed is limited to internal strategies like marketing or distribution. New product development, mass production, and supply chain management remains a linear and rigid process susceptible to bottlenecks and long lead times, limiting brands’ ability to bring new products to market at the pace set by dynamic consumer demand.
Atelier is pioneering a new manufacturing methodology to overcome these persistent and costly challenges: composable manufacturing.
This method will revolutionise the way consumer brands develop, produce, and deliver unique products, enabling them to cater to the dynamic needs of today’s consumers.
Traditionally, CPG manufacturing consists of consecutive stages: product development, procurement of materials, production, packaging, and distribution. Each of these stages consist of a number of functions — from engineering and design to manufacturing and logistics — that are typically autonomous and geographically distributed around the world. So, to bring a single product to market requires the orchestration of fragmented manufacturing resources with heterogeneous priorities, capacities, and methods of communication.
End-to-end supply chains are fragile and unreliable, yet a critical component of a consumer business’ strategy. Several studies have shown that a company’s share price drops by 7-9% on average following the announcement of a supply chain disruption.
Composable manufacturing, on the other hand, virtualises physical manufacturing resources into a unified cloud network with centralised management that can be accessed by customers through a single interface. Customers receive access to manufacturing capabilities including components that can be combined in unique ways to compose novel product offerings. Built with a semantic approach to data through, knowledge graphs, digital twins, and data-driven design, composable manufacturing enables the rapid and efficient assembly of diverse product elements, allowing brands to:
- Create a virtually limitless array of personalised products
- Quickly adapt to changing market trends and dynamic consumer needs
- Optimise their supply chain processes.
This white paper discusses the core components of composable manufacturing, illustrating how Atelier is effectively implementing it in CPG beauty manufacturing and how this concept can be applied to the manufacture of all multi-component products . The key benefits that CPG beauty brands can reap from this innovative approach will be thoroughly examined, including enhanced product customisation, accelerated time-to-market, reduced environmental impact, and improved cost efficiency.
Section 1: Harnessing Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Sustainability Data for Transformative Product Development.
It is widely accepted that visibility is one of the key challenges in building resilient supply chains, with the majority of a company’s knowledge of their supply chain extending as far as their first-tier supplier. And, because of the way many raw materials are produced and traded, many of these first-tier suppliers lack accurate provenance data on their inputs. This weakens the authority of sustainability reporting methods, such as life cycle assessments (LCAs) and Greenhouse Gas Protocols (GHGP). These tools are effective for reassuring consumers and investors, but they are not accurate representations of a products’ environmental impact. Sustainability and eco-friendliness:
Composable manufacturing surfaces and aggregates previously disparate manufacturing datasets, producing the same degree of supply chain visibility as vertically integrated supply chains formed by only a small number of large businesses, like Zara or Shein. This increases competitive advantage amongst consumer brands by making strategic data accessible at a lower cost.
1.1 The impact of Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Sustainability data visibility
Making end-to-end manufacturing and supply chain data visible for brands and manufacturers can significantly enhance product development processes, driving innovation and differentiation. Valuable insights drawn from this data can produce:
- Efficiency and optimisation: Manufacturing data can be leveraged to monitor production processes in real-time, identify bottlenecks, and optimise resource utilisation for increased efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and speed-to-market.
- Transparency and traceability: Supply chain data can be utilised to track and trace raw materials, components, and finished products throughout the value chain, ensuring quality and accountability.
- Sustainability and eco-friendliness: Harnessing sustainability data to develop eco-friendly formulations, packaging, and production processes that minimise environmental impact and resonate with environmentally conscious consumers.
1.2 Composable Manufacturing and Data-Driven Transformation
Composable manufacturing catalyses data-driven transformation, integrating manufacturing, supply chain, and sustainability data into the product development process. Composable manufacturing facilitates data-driven innovation in the following areas:
- Agile production: Employing manufacturing data to develop modular components that enable rapid product customisation, adaptation, and scalability to meet fluctuating market demands and consumer preferences.
- Resilient supply chains: Leveraging supply chain data to identify vulnerabilities, mitigate risks, and create adaptive strategies that ensure the uninterrupted flow of goods and materials.
- Sustainable innovation: Harnessing sustainability data to develop eco-friendly formulations, packaging, and production processes that minimise environmental impact and resonate with environmentally conscious consumers.
1.3 Capitalising on Data Synergies
The combination of exhaustive data in manufacturing, supply chain, and sustainability domains creates synergies that can unlock new creative outcomes for CPG brands and their product development efforts. These data sources can be integrated and analysed to produce novel product outcomes that drive innovation, such as:
- Predictive analytics: Utilising machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyse data patterns, anticipate market trends, and optimise inventory management, reducing waste and improving cost efficiency.
- Holistic decision-making: Combining data from various sources to create a comprehensive view of the product life cycle, enabling informed decisions that balance efficiency, sustainability, and consumer preferences with manufacturing output.
- Continuous improvement: Implementing a data-driven feedback loop that allows for ongoing monitoring, evaluation, and refinement of products and processes, ensuring consistent quality and continuous evolution.
Section 2: Leveraging Manufacturing Data Networks for Emergent Efficiencies
The comprehensive mapping of manufacturing capability data and its dynamic, real-time representation as a network can yield emergent efficiencies for CPG brands. In a networked model, customers can access distributed manufacturing capabilities that have been virtualised under a unified data structure. Product components from multiple manufacturing resources can be configured in an optimised manner through a single portal, increasing the strategic advantage for brands during new product development, mass production, and scalability. This is particularly powerful for independent CPG brands in beauty, as scalability remains a challenge despite strong consumer interest.
As information exchange is critical to the efficient collaboration between manufacturing resources, manufacturing networks enable the instantaneous transaction of complex and granular information between all nodes within a network. Currently, these exchanges take place through message-based transactions that are limited by language barriers, time zones, government regulations (i.e., censorship), and channels (i.e., email or social messaging apps). Within a networked model, accurate and detailed manufacturing data can be exchanged anywhere, anytime.
2.1 Building Antifragile Supply Chains
In an increasingly interconnected and unpredictable global market, the ability to create antifragile supply chains is essential for business resilience. Mapping manufacturing capability to data networks can build antifragile supply chains by facilitating:
- Redundancy and flexibility: Identifying alternative suppliers, manufacturers, and distribution channels within the network maintains a continuous flow of goods and materials, even when faced with unforeseen disruptions, such as stock outs or natural disasters.
- Data-driven risk mitigation: Analysing real-time data on supplier performance, geopolitical factors, and environmental conditions proactively identifies and addresses potential risks, ensuring supply chain resilience.
- Collaboration and visibility: Enhancing communication and information sharing across the entire supply chain, fostering collaboration, and enabling faster, more informed decision-making in response to changing circumstances.
2.2 Enhancing Price Competitiveness
Achieving price competitiveness is crucial for CPG brands seeking to differentiate themselves in a crowded market. The dynamic access to manufacturing capability data networks can lead to more competitive pricing strategies by:
- Optimising resource allocation: Leveraging real-time data to identify the most cost-effective suppliers, manufacturers, and distribution channels, reducing production costs, and enabling more competitive pricing for consumers.
- Scalability and demand responsiveness: Utilising data insights to rapidly scale production up or down based on market demand, avoiding excess inventory, and minimising waste, ultimately lowering costs.
- Benchmarking and negotiation: Analysing data on industry pricing trends and competitor strategies to inform pricing decisions and negotiate more favourable terms with suppliers and partners.
2.3 Accelerating Development and Manufacturing Efficiencies
The real-time access to manufacturing capability data networks can also drive rapid development and manufacturing efficiencies, contributing to more robust CPG businesses. Data networks can streamline product development and manufacturing processes through:
- Modular design: Identifying and leveraging the most efficient and innovative manufacturing capabilities within the network to create modular components that enable rapid product customisation and adaptation.
- Automation and AI: Harnessing advanced technologies such as robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to automate routine tasks, reduce human error, and increase overall efficiency.
- Continuous improvement: Utilising real-time data to monitor and evaluate production processes, identify areas for improvement, and implement adjustments, ensuring consistent quality and ongoing optimisation.
Section 3: Leveraging Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Enrichment for Manufacturing Data Interoperability and Integration
One of the most significant challenges in networked manufacturing resources is the interoperability and integration of disparate manufacturing data. Stakeholder misalignment and the lack of interoperability standards have been previously credited with the failure of the large-scale implementation of networked manufacturing. However, under centralised management, manufacturing resources can be integrated and made interoperable as stakeholders are aligned. The knowledge graph presents an ideal solution for managing these complex, disparate manufacturing data sources because it is designed to capture the intricate relationships between vast amounts of data across environments.
3.1 Advantages of knowledge graphs for Manufacturing Data
The unique capabilities of knowledge graphs make them particularly well-suited for addressing the challenges of integrating and managing disparate manufacturing data sources. The key benefits of this technology include:
- Flexible data modelling: Graph databases enable a more natural and intuitive representation of real-world resources and their relationships, allowing for seamless integration of diverse data sources.
- Scalability and performance: Graph databases are designed to handle large-scale, complex datasets with ease, ensuring high performance and efficient querying even as data volumes grow.
- Enhanced data discovery and analysis: The structure of graph databases facilitates the identification of patterns, trends, and connections across disparate datasets, enabling more powerful analytics and insights.
3.2 Solving Interoperability Challenges
The knowledge graph can effectively address the interoperability challenges that arise when working with disparate manufacturing data sources. Graph databases can facilitate seamless data integration and interoperability, such as:
- Standardising data formats: Graph databases allow for the harmonisation of data from different sources, ensuring consistency and compatibility across the entire dataset.
- Streamlined data integration: The flexible structure of graph databases enables the easy integration of new data sources, simplifying the process of merging and updating datasets.
- Semantic enrichment: Graph databases can leverage ontologies and semantic technologies to add context and meaning to data, enhancing interoperability, and enabling more accurate analytics.
3.3 Impacts of the knowledge graph for Brands
Overcoming interoperability and integration challenges through graph database technologies enables brands of all sizes to navigate complex, disparate datasets, unlocking valuable insights to drive product innovation. Some of the advantages for brands include:
- Enhanced Decision-Making: The identification of new trends and patterns from existing data sets enable brands to make high impact decisions throughout the NPD and manufacturing process to optimise their supply chains.
- Streamlined Compliance: Regulatory changes in external knowledge sources can be swiftly updated, assisting customers to meet different mark requirements for stakeholders like consumers, regulators, and industry associations.
- Innovation Acceleration: Previously unseen relationships and patterns across markets, materials, and capabilities stimulates innovative and evidence-based ideas for NPD.
Section 4: Enhancing Creative Outcomes in Product Development through Composable and Shoppable Digital Twins
A key to revolutionising the NPD and manufacturing process via composable manufacturing is ensuring that customers are able to access this networked manufacturing data with ease, sophistication, and accuracy. This is achieved by making the physical output of these networked manufacturing resources composable and shoppable; not only are they virtualised as data points within a network, but these resources are then visualised as shoppable digital twins. Customers see exact 3D representations of the manufacturing resources within the network without needing the physical product manufactured first, enabling real time customisation. This reduces development times, minimises errors in sampling, reduces waste during NPD, and improves brand user NPS.
4.1 Transforming Product Development with Digital Twins for Creative Outcomes
Utilising digital twins enables a more efficient and accurate product development process. These benefits include:
- Enhanced visualisation: Dynamically rendering digital twins in a 3D environment using Three.js allows brand users to visualise packaging components in unprecedented detail.
- Real-time customisation: Enabling users to modify primary packaging attributes such as colour, material, and finish dynamically within the 3D environment, streamlining the design process.
- Accurate representation: Allowing users to apply product artwork to the digital twin, generating a lifelike representation of the final manufactured output, minimising the need for physical prototypes.
4.2 The Power of Composability and Shopability
A comprehensive network of manufacturing resources that are composable and shoppable enable CPG brands to develop complex and unique products from the same network. This output offers brands billions of product combinations without spending the resources traditionally required to develop unique products. The advantages of this customer experience include:
- Accelerated decision-making: Brands receive instant access to a vast array of manufacturing options, enabling them to compare and select the most suitable components for their product development needs rapidly.
- Streamlined procurement: Facilitated seamless communication and transactions between brand users and manufacturers, simplifying the procurement process, and shortening lead times.
- Enhanced collaboration: Fostered collaboration between brand users and manufacturers through the platform, ensuring a more efficient and effective product development process.
4.3 Impact on Product Development, Sampling, and Brand User NPS
The flow on effect for the aforementioned advantages positively impacts product development times, sampling errors, and brand user NPS. These impacts include:
- Reduced development times: By streamlining the design, visualisation, and procurement processes, Atelier significantly reduces product development times, allowing brands to bring products to market faster.
- Minimised sampling errors: The platform's accurate digital representations minimise the need for physical prototypes, reducing errors and waste associated with traditional sampling methods.
- Improved brand user NPS: The Atelier Platform's user-friendly interface, extensive product catalogue, and efficient processes contribute to higher satisfaction and loyalty among brand users, resulting in a higher Net Promoter Score (NPS).
Section 5: Composing the Future - Atelier’s Comprehensive Mapping of the Beauty Manufacturing Landscape
As Atelier moves forward, its ambitious goal of mapping the entire beauty manufacturing landscape, including primary, secondary, and tertiary supply chains, will provide users with an exhaustive understanding of the true cost of their products. This section of the white paper will paint a vivid picture of this future and discuss its potential impact on the world, as well as the massive financial outcomes and network effects it will create for Atelier.
5.1: A Source of Truth for the Beauty Industry
In this envisioned future, Atelier will provide users with unparalleled insights into the financial, ecological, human, and ethical costs of the products they create. This transparency will empower consumers with a source of truth regarding the products they use, enabling them to make more informed purchasing decisions. The implications of this comprehensive visibility include:
- Sustainable product development: Encouraging beauty brands to prioritise eco-friendly practices by highlighting the environmental impact of their products, leading to a more sustainable industry.
- Ethical sourcing and labour practices: Revealing the human and ethical costs associated with product manufacturing, driving brands to adopt fair labour practices and responsible sourcing.
- Consumer awareness and empowerment: Providing consumers with accurate information about the products they consume, fostering a more conscious and responsible consumer base.
5.2: Global Impact and the Path to a Better World
By offering exhaustive visibility into the beauty manufacturing landscape, Atelier has the potential to reshape the industry into a more functional and sustainable organism, leading to a better world. The wide-ranging impact of this future includes:
- Environmental stewardship: Promoting a more sustainable and eco-conscious beauty industry that minimises waste, reduces emissions, and protects natural resources.
- Social responsibility: Advocating for fair labour practices, ethical sourcing, and equitable treatment of workers throughout the supply chain, contributing to a more just and humane global economy.
- Consumer trust and loyalty: Fostering transparency and accountability within the beauty industry, leading to increased consumer trust and loyalty to brands that prioritise sustainability and ethics.
5.3: Financial Outcomes, Defensibility, and Network Effects
As Atelier realises its vision of mapping the entire beauty manufacturing landscape, the platform will experience significant financial growth, strong defensibility, and powerful network effects. The key drivers of this success include:
- Market leadership: Atelier's comprehensive mapping will position it as the go-to platform for beauty brands seeking transparency and efficiency in product development, driving increased adoption and revenue.
- Defensibility: The platform's unique value proposition, extensive database, and seamless integration of supply chain data will create strong barriers to entry for potential competitors, ensuring Atelier's long-term success.
- Network effects: As more manufacturers, suppliers, and brands join the Atelier Network, the platform's value will increase exponentially, attracting even more users and solidifying its position as an indispensable tool in the beauty industry.
The future of Atelier promises a more transparent, sustainable, and ethical beauty industry that empowers consumers and fosters responsible practices. By achieving its ambitious vision, Atelier will not only create a better world but also secure its position as a market leader, experiencing substantial financial success and powerful network effects that will drive its continued growth and innovation.
Conclusion: Unleashing the Power of Composable Manufacturing for a Sustainable and Innovative Future
Throughout this white paper, we have explored the potential of composable manufacturing to revolutionise product development and manufacturing for CPG brands. By leveraging cutting-edge technologies, data-driven insights, and a comprehensive understanding of the manufacturing landscape, composable manufacturing will unlock new creative outcomes, streamline product development, and pave the way for a more sustainable and ethical industry.
In doing so, we have examined the key components that enable this transformation, including:
- The surfacing of new and disparate datasets, encompassing manufacturing data, supply chain data, and sustainability data, which together provide a holistic view of the product development ecosystem and empower brands to make informed decisions.
- The comprehensive mapping of manufacturing capability data and its representation as a dynamic, real-time network, creating emergent efficiencies and creative outcomes for brands, such as antifragile supply chains, price competitiveness, and rapid development and manufacturing efficiencies.
- The application of graph database technology to address the challenges of interoperability and integration of disparate manufacturing data sources, enabling seamless connections and powerful analytics to drive decision-making and innovation.
- The transformation of physical manufacturing resources into composable and shoppable digital twins via the Atelier Platform, driving down product development times and reducing errors in sampling while improving brand user NPS.
- The vision of a future where Atelier maps the entire beauty manufacturing landscape, providing exhaustive visibility into primary, secondary, and tertiary supply chains, and revealing the true cost of products in terms of financial, ecological, human, and ethical costs.
By embracing composable manufacturing, CPG brands can position themselves at the forefront of industry innovation, creating differentiated products that appeal to increasingly conscious and discerning consumers with dynamic needs. Adopting composable manufacturing will contribute to a more sustainable and ethical beauty industry, promoting responsible practices that minimise environmental impact, ensure fair labour conditions, and empower consumers with transparent information about the products they use. As such, composable manufacturing represents a transformative force within the CPG beauty sector and beyond, promising to reshape the product development landscape and create a brighter, more sustainable future for brands, consumers, and those involved in supply chains.