sampling noodles

Today I went for a visit to Tat Hui Foods Pte Ltd, organized by omy.sg. Tat Hui Foods is the manufacturer of the Koka brand of instant noodles. From what I gathered from them, 90% of their sales comes from export, so they actually help to spread our Singapore brandname worldwide.

The main agenda of this visit was to sample Koka's latest noodles flavours that are not available in the market yet. So we were given samples of unknown brands of noodles of the same category (ie, chicken flavour of brand X pit against chicken flavour of brand Y) We were asked about our preference based on attributes such as aroma, taste, mouth feel, texture, etc. And we had to clear the aftertaste in our mouth by eating crackers and sipping water after each sample. Consumer review and questionnaire are useful steps in New Product Development (NPD) process.
I can't remember how many samples of noodles I sampled.
We also visited the production line while at the factory. My most exciting part of the visit. Machines! It was indeed very fascinating to see how the instant noodles that we eat in daily life are made. From flour then become one flat piece like sheet metal, going through a set of rollers (seriously, like metal work), then drawn into noodles, cooked, goes into the cup, add the seasoning pack, seal, package, go into box. I was quite impressed with their stringent quality control. For example I saw one cup topple in the production line. Straight away the line operator discard that unit cos the noodle came out of the cup. Then at another station I saw 1 cup didn't meet the weight requirement, automatically discarded by the machine.


The staffs (including the production line workers. Sorry, I disturbed them) were very happy to answer my many questions (problem kid here). The visit was really an eye-opener for me and I came back with 2 bags full of noodles. Really looking forward to similar events in the future.