Yanbal International: A Successful Personal Care and Cosmetics PLM Implementation

Yanbal International Corporation is a global direct selling company with over 50 years of success in the beauty industry. With presence in nine countries throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States, Yanbal is committed to empowering women. Headquartered in Lima, Peru, the company employs 3,300 people worldwide.

Yanbal’s research and development (R&D) division in South Florida is the center for its makeup, personal care and skincare formula developments.

At the core of Yanbal’s operation is a product lifecycle management (PLM) system from Aptean that was implemented in 2020.

The Challenge

Yanbal’s IT Business Manager realized the need for a PLM solution as the company’s previous software was implemented 25 years ago and started to show security maintenance issues. “We needed a solution as comprehensive as the one we had previously, but up to today’s security standards and offering complementary product development features, such as regulatory compliance management,” the IT business manager said, adding “we also targeted web-based solutions to reduce our need for maintenance.”

The challenges Yanbal was facing included:

• Outdated legacy software

• Limited market options with inadequate R&D functional scope

• Need to reduce maintenance by transitioning to a web-based solution

The Solution

Yanbal’s IT and R&D departments paired up to identify potential PLM vendor candidates. They led a comprehensive benchmarking of the market and had a hard time finding solutions that met their requirements. Most were either very limited in their R&D functional scope or lacked the added values they were looking for. Yanbal’s team eventually found Aptean’s PLM for cosmetics and personal care companies on Capterra, a platform listing and comparing B2B software solutions, requested further information and got the demonstration started.

Yanbal’s IT Business Manager said of the process, “Aptean showed great expertise during the demonstrations, making them accessible, and scheduling a few more based on our questions. Their team was open and eager to answer any questions they[AS1] [RS2] had throughout the process. Moreover, Aptean PLM has honorable references and a great reputation in the cosmetic industry”.

R&D module key features implemented to address Yanbal International’s needs:

• Formulation Management – Enables for each brief the simultaneous development of multiple prototypes, all managed like distinct products with their own lifecycles. Comparison is easy and workflows monitor the approval processes.

• Document Generation – Aptean’s cosmetics PLM automatically generates high added-value contents and documents in compliance with different regulatory frameworks. Yanbal International uses it, for instance, to generate the US regulatory file and the EU product information file (P.I.F.) of its new products.

• Formula Analysis – Assesses both quality and quantity of ingredients to optimize product formulations, ensuring accuracy.

• Manufacturing Process and Batch Sheets – The tool automatically generates the batch sheets, and the manufacturing process considers the equipment configurations depending on the production site.

• ERP Interface – Aptean PLM is interfaced with Yanbal International’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to ensure a seamless transition from design to production.

The Results

Yanbal’s IT Business Manager said the user acceptance testing found that Aptean’s PLM for cosmetics “delivered the ease of use promised during the demonstrations”.

For Yanbal, implementing Aptean PLM is an opportunity to forge better practices among its teams regarding data and document management.

Yanbal achieves the following with Aptean’s PLM for cosmetics and personal care businesses:

• Enhanced formulation management

• Automated regulatory compliance

• Seamless ERP integration