Sunday, April 20, 2008

Who's managing your Packaging?

I was just at a container vendor with a client and I wanted to share a couple of observations with you. When we first saw the new graphics it was clear that there were some separation mistakes made to the art. There was a big disconnect between the design files and the plates. 

Looking at the proofs it was clear that the printouts that the container manufacturer made were correct but the film supplier had incorrectly trapped some of the elements in the logo when they output their films. Unfortunately for us, the plate-maker with the problem films was located several states away. We also only had PDF prints and did not have color keys (remember those!?) on hand made from the actual films.

We weren't going to be able to recover from their mistake and potentially missed the fill date at the bottler. Does this sound familiar? 

It is critical to follow the Artwork all the way through the process from design, separations to the printer. The design files must match the mechanicals and then the plates. It is the customers job to sign off on each of the stages.

If the plates are generated using films it is always a good idea to have the printers supply match-prints or even keys if they have the capability so they can be matched back to the original art. This should be done well in advance of the press run. Had this been done we wouldn't have been is such a bind and would have made the filling schedule. . . . Looking at the art for the first time when you are at the printers is too late!


Thursday, April 10, 2008

Wal-Mart Stores - Package Modeling

Well, it was bound to happen: Wal-Mart wants your company to 'go green' and the way they are going to make you do it is through Package Modeling, or having you compare your products with your peers. This is part of Wal-Mart's effort to reduce overall packaging by a minimum of five percent by the year 2013. This is a summary of what I learned in the seminar, and I am in no way connected with any of this, but I find this stuff interesting. No matter what your feelings are about Wal-Mart, this will have an impact on your packaging for years to come. 

They have teamed up with ECRM Software (ECRM stands for Electronic Customer Relationship Management or "Efficient Collaborative Retail Marketing" according to their website.) and  Thumbprint LTD

Last week, I took the webcast to get a feeling on where this is going to take all of us. There are four modules:

1. Retail Link- Developed by Wal-Mart to manage key elements of the buyer-seller relationships.
2. Sustainable Packaging Scorecard- Developed by Wal-Mart with leading public and private experts and as an extension of Retail Link to evaluate packaging.
3. Wal-Mart Package Modeling- Developed to help manufacturers find sustainability improvements in their packaging
4. MarketGate™- Developed by ECRM to help manufacturers network with packaging Suppliers. 

Wal-Mart is encouraging all of their suppliers to enter all of their packaging SKU's into #2 and is currently part of their purchasing process. Once your packaging is entered, it will be compared with everyone else's packaging and given a score. You will get to see how your packaging does against your competitors packaging. Not only that, you can run 'what-ifs' to see how changes affect your score. Although you won't be able to see who your competition is, obviously Wal-Mart will be able to review this info to make more informed purchasing decisions. 

Basically, you will have to divide the product volume by the selling LxWxH. Then multiply that out by the transport cube volume. Then those figures will be applied along with nine material metrics weighted by product category. Some of these categories have nothing to do with the packaging at all. The nine metrics are: Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Material Health & Safety, Average Distance to Transport Materials, Package to Product Ratio, Cube Utilization, Recycled Content, Recovery, Renewable Energy, Innovation Different from Energy Standards. 

No good or bad scores, but higher scores are better and make note that their buyers bonuses will be partly dependent on purchasing products with sustainable packaging!

Before you make any decisions on what your company is going to do about this I encourage you to take the seminar and ask questions. While I applaud Wal-Marts efforts, the burden of this will be placed firmly on the supplier.  You are going to have to have engineers and/or people schooled in how to do this to enter your SKU's. I have no idea how this will affect the industry, but I suspect that the packaging will continue to get smaller/thinner until the pallets all but disappear and the product hits the floor. This might also encourage green-washing. Feel free to leave your comments.