Product Planning (NPI)
The New Product Introduction (NPI) pipeline - every product's website imagery, produced per SKU, brand by brand.
Product Planning is WAC’s New Product Introduction (NPI) engine: the planned, per-SKU production of all product imagery - photography, videography, and CG - for every brand, the imagery that ships to the company website as PPID images.
This is catalog out - structured, year-based output. (The on-demand request side is Marketing Creative Requests (MCR).)
01 · The lifecycle
Every SKU moves through the same eight stages
Section titled “Every SKU moves through the same eight stages”A single conveyor belt from a new SKU on the board to PPID images on the website. Photo, video, and CG all feed the same Iconik review and PPID export.
flowchart LR
A([New SKU]) --> B[PM pre-selection]
B --> C[Capture / Render]
C --> D{Iconik review}
D -->|Revise| C
D -->|Approved| E[PPID prep]
E --> F[Brand Mgr review]
F --> G[PM web tagging]
G --> H[PPID export]
H --> I([Website])
02 · The golden rule
One SKU, one conveyor belt
Section titled “One SKU, one conveyor belt”A SKU advances only when its current phase reaches Approved in the Iconik review loop. Never skip the queue, and never duplicate a file - the filespace tracks versions by checksum, so a copy breaks Iconik.
03 · The phases
The four production phases
Section titled “The four production phases”- Photography - capture (AMC/USA), PM selection, edited versions.
- Videography - product video, romance language, motion.
- CG & 3D - models, renders, cam solve.
- PPID & web export - resize/rename approved images and push to the website.
Crossing every phase:
- The Iconik image-review loop - the visual-QA approval cycle.
- Cross-team handoffs - where work passes between teams.
04 · Definition of done
Definition of done, per phase
Section titled “Definition of done, per phase”A SKU advances only when its current phase’s subitem reaches Approved in the
Iconik review loop. See the status glossary for the
full status vocabulary.