Supply Chain Management – The Total Picture – Part 2. Package Design Compatibility

The primary requirement of the package is to provide a marketable package that protects the product arriving to the customer in a “salable” condition. There are many factions that come into play that lead up to a successful product’s package design. Unfortunately, some of these package design components may have a competing nature that the Packaging Engineer must identify and find a common balance. One of those types of design elements revolves around insuring the package design is manufacturable – both by the supplier and then runs efficiently on the product packaging line.

The best protective package design cannot fulfill this charge if the package components are not totally compatible with the supplier and production package manufacturing processes, causing scrap, downtime and package integrity degradation.

Rules for the Package Designer:

1.     Spend time in your plant. Talk with the production staff. Watch the line run. Learn what materials, designs and tolerances work for your production process/equipment. E.g. Due to age and complexity, an older Bliss carton erector, even though technically should have been adjustable to convert from single wall to double wall parts, ran horribly when tried. Parts were returned back to single wall and the additional box rigidity was found by another means.

2.     Don’t assume. Again, talk with your plant staff, e.g. plant engineer, and suppliers. Tell them what your plan is, then listen to what they say and thoughtfully consider their comments and recommendations.

3.     Develop a thorough package specification for each component. The part specification must provide all dimensions the supplier needs to successfully manufacture the part. The specification must also provide realistic critical dimension tolerances to be manufacturable by the supplier and compatible with the working tolerances of the product packaging production equipment/processes. The spec is the contract with the supplier. You are telling the supplier, “As long as parts are made within this specification, they will run on my line.” Get those dimensions and tolerances right.

4.     Test and validate. Again, don’t assume the “perfect” looking design is indeed perfect until you validate it works. Arrange with your plant to run/try samples to see how well they work through production processes. Lastly perform a line trial validation with production made parts under actual production speeds and conditions.

5.     If production problems occur, first take a look at the package design. Before, or at least in parallel to engage other resources, e.g. production and suppliers, take a look at the package design to insure it is robust enough to be compatible with the other supply chain components. Even if the part ran acceptably before, there may be normal tolerance condition(s) that were not known/taken in account for that have now cropped up.

So, two things must happen. Either the package is designed compatible with the production processes or the Packaging Engineer justifies changes to the process, e.g. purchase new machinery. Not saying the latter will never happen, but in all likelihood, the onus will be on the package design to be made compatible with the existing package supply chain variables. So, the first step to successful package supply chain management begins with robust package designs and thorough package component specifications.