Relationship between PDP maturity and ISO certification in the food industry

Abstract Food companies have been seeking certification of their Product Development Processes (PDP) as a symbol of quality, however, few are prepared to obtain it. One of the hypotheses is that some companies are not mature enough to obtain this certification and maintain it in the long term. To guarantee the product quality, it is important that all the activities responsible for the PDP are aligned, integrated, measured and controlled, thus characterizing the PDP maturity. Therefore, the aim of this work is to analyze the PDP maturity level of the food industry to identify the compatibility with the situation of their Quality Certifications. For this, an adapted method of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is used to measure the company’s maturity, seeking also to identify the status of their certifications. Information was collected from five companies in the food industry, which presented consistency between their certifications and maturity levels; four are level 1 and have no certification and one is level 2 and is certified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)