Product Structures vs Recipe Structure in Food Manufacturing?

Hi ​@mlforseti,

In food manufacturing, the choice between recipe structures and product structures really depends on the complexity of your process and the level of precision required.

If your production relies heavily on weight/volume-based measurements, requires batch-specific adjustments, or needs to track things like yield, density, shelf life, and ingredient variability, then recipe structures are the better choice. They are specifically built for industries like food and beverage, where ingredient behavior and process nuances significantly impact the final product. They also allow more realistic modeling of how recipes are produced in real life, offering functionality like adjusting based on the available volume or scaling from a single component.

However, if your recipes are simple, fixed, and don’t change often, and your priority is to streamline system use and integration—especially with external systems like Optiva—then product structures might be more practical. They offer a cleaner and more standardized approach to managing bill of materials and are easier to maintain, especially in organizations where the technical team or users are more familiar with discrete manufacturing practices.

Ultimately, it comes down to a trade-off between flexibility and specificity (recipe structures) versus simplicity and system efficiency (product structures). I have seen companies start with recipes for the accuracy, but over time may move to product structures to simplify operations—especially when integrating with broader enterprise systems or when the complexity of recipe management becomes a bottleneck.