Flavour and fragrance blend proposal

[Mike Dewhirst]

AICIS Guidance

AICIS guidance is absolutely clear that no matter what chemicals are in a low-risk flavour or fragrance blend, they are only interested in individual chemicals being introduced in the blend.

The word blend is synonymous with mixture albeit understood to be a sub-mixture within a mixture - or formulation.

Chemintro current design

Individual chemicals need to be separately introduced. This design should not be changed for low risk flavour or fragrance blends because it satisfies current AICIS rules and guidance.

The saving grace for the current design is that it is simple and the same chemical can be used in multiple products delivering proper information management.

It is vital that this design feature does not change

Chemintro redesign impetus

Data entry in Chemintro becomes, however, quite onerous for formulators who work with multiple blends in varying proportions in different products.

There is a Chemintro redesign impetus to ease data entry by using prepared blends of chemicals to formulate products directly instead of, or together with, individual chemicals.

Redesign requirements

• A chemical needs to be selectable to construct a blend

• Different blends may contain the same chemicals in different proportions

• A blend needs to be selectable alongside chemicals in a product

• Multiple different blends in varying proportions may be used in the same product

• A blend must transform into a set of actual chemicals making up a product

• Any particular chemical can only appear once in a product

Blend user interface

• Main Menu section labelled Blends with Add a new Blend

• Enter a Blend name

• In a sub-section Add another chemical select an existing Chemical - but not an existing Blend - as the new ingredient

• Enter the Precise proportion of the Chemical in that Blend

• Repeat, adding chemicals until the Blend is complete (<= 100%) and [Save]

Product user interface

• Add or select a Product

• Scroll down and click Add another Product-chemical proportions

• Select blends before selecting chemicals because saving a Product with a Blend will automatically add all the chemicals in the blend at the correct proportions.

• Select additional chemicals as required. If one of the blend related chemicals needs to be "added" it will already be there so just increase its Proportion and adjust its Max concentration accordingly.

• On saving, any blends involved will be scanned and proportions of chemicals common to multiple involved blends will be summed pro rata per the Blend proportion in the Product. Likewise, max concentrations will be recalculated.

• If the ingredient chemicals calculated proportions and max concentrations exceed the existing values it means one or more blends containing some of the same chemicals were added and so the larger values will be used to update those chemical proportions and max concentrations. Otherwise, a human must have manually increased the value - hence they will not be updated.

[Mike Dewhirst]

Edited to clarify

[Mike Dewhirst]

In a sub-section Add another chemical select an existing Chemical - but not an existing Blend - as the new ingredient

It may be unnecessary to prevent adding an existing blend. In fact it may advantageous to create new blends using pre-existing blends. Some R&D is indicated.

[Mike Dewhirst]

Select blends before selecting chemicals because saving a Product with a Blend will automatically add all the chemicals in the blend at the correct proportions.

This may be unnecessary. Some R&D is indicated.

[Mike Dewhirst]

Blends

To make it work for you, here are the steps:

Making a blend

1. Create all the blend ingredient chemicals in the usual manner. Introduce them if necessary.

2. In the Chemical main menu, select Blend ingredients and click Add Blend Ingredient

3. You will see two drop-down lists labelled Chemical and Ingredient. This is where you select the blend chemical and one of the ingredients. Enter the precise proportion of the ingredient within the blend.

4. Click [Save] and repeat until the blend is ready for use

Note 1. If you haven't already created a host chemical for the blend, click the green + plus-sign to add one and give it a name which makes it obviously a blend. You will have to enter the first few initial mandatory fields but nothing is significant because the software just uses it as a vehicle with a blend name to carry other ingredient (real) chemicals. Don't forget to [Save].

Using a blend

5. In the Chemical menu select Product-chemical proportions and click Add

6. In the upperProduct drop-down list select the Product which will contain the blend

7. In the lower Chemical drop-down list select the prepared blend chemical

8. Enter the proportion of the blend in the Product and click [Save and continue editing] twice.

9. Repeat from 5. above until the Product has all its blends and other chemicals

Note 2. First save in step 8 above gets the blend saved in the database. The second save attaches all the prepared blend ingredients (from step 3 above) to the Product and finally calculates Product ingredient proportions according to blend proportion.

Note 3. Blend proportion in the Product is also used to adjust Max end-use concentration of each blend chemical ingredient in the Product.

Note 4. You can add multiple prepared blends to a Product. If the same chemical appears in more than one blend, it only gets added to the Product once. Proportions and max concentrations are summed.

Note 5. You can manually increase a Product (blend) ingredient proportion and that will be respected. If a summed (blend) ingredient proportion is less than the existing Product ingredient proportion, the software assumes a human adjusted it upwards and doesn't touch it.

Note 6. You cannot decrease a Product (blend) ingredient proportion (or summed proportion) because it will be overwritten by the software when recalculating on saving.

Note 7. If you must decrease a blend chemical proportion in the Product, the blend recalculation can only be defeated by deleting all Product-chemical proportions blend records containing that ingredient.

Note 8. You can optionally delete Product-chemical proportions blend records after their ingredients have been added. You can also leave them there for the record because they have no further effect beyond confirming calculations on each save. Deleting a Product-chemical proportions record does not delete either the Product or the Chemical.