Packaging For Tomorrow

John Bauschka asked:


Kitting and packaging are integral elements in the typical manufacturing process. In most cases of sourcing in supply chain management, these elements are taken for granted, such that many manufacturers underestimate the myriad advantages to be gained from streamlining these important tasks.

Electronics manufacturers, in particular, stand to benefit from more efficient kitting and packaging systems. These manufacturers are often faced with the unique challenge of having to find ways to effectively ship the most up-to-date products and the latest packaging to retailers. This can be a difficult feat to accomplish in a timely manner due to the frequency with which product upgrades, documentation changes, software updates, and changes in promotional strategies are made by the engineering and marketing departments. Due to the speed with which these elements can change for any given product, manufacturing departments often cannot effectively keep up with these changes in the context of conducting their kitting and shipping procedures.

Here are 5 benefits manufacturers can realize by streamlining their kitting and packaging processes:

1 - Ability to implement special offers and product upgrades with shorter lead time:

In today’s competitive environment, corporate marketing departments need to remain responsive to market needs by offering special promotions in short order. When such promotions are implemented with short lead times, the situation affords the manufacturing department insufficient lead time to reflect those special offers in the packaging. Similarly, the need to upgrade products due to the detection of product defects or the introduction of new technologies puts pressure on the manufacturing department to respond to these changes quickly and efficiently.

When such promotional changes or product upgrades are required, manufacturers who are not streamlined are often forced to unpack and then repackage existing stock before it leaves the warehouse. Or, just as inconveniently, the special offer or product upgrade is not implemented in time for shipments to be made. However, by outsourcing these tasks to a third-party logistics partner who manages the kitting and packaging tasks on site, products can remain unpackaged until just days before they are to be shipped. The result is a much more flexible and responsive manufacturing process.

2 - Ship only the most up-to-date product software and documentation:

Electronics and software manufacturers face the unique challenge of needing to implement product updates much more frequently than do manufacturers of most other types of products. Firmware updates, new specifications, actions by competitors, and other realities of the high tech world force engineers to update product software and documentation within very short time spans - often much more rapidly than manufacturing planners can respond to effectively.

By streamlining the kitting and packaging processes so that they can be performed as closely in time as possible to actual product ship dates, manufacturers can realize a significant savings in terms of avoiding these unpacking and repacking costs.

3 - Improve relationships with retailers:

Retailers do well when their customers are happy, and their customers in turn are happy when they feel they have access to the latest products and services in retail stores. Fortunately, manufacturers stand to improve the relationships they have with their distribution partners and retailers by supplying them with the latest, hottest products in a more timely manner. By being able to react quickly to market changes through better efficiency in packaging, manufacturers can keep retailers (and their customers) pleased.

4 - More effectively target specific customers:

Manufacturers that can flexibly tailor their marketing efforts to specific target segments have a decided advantage in the marketplace today. With the increasing availability and use of sophisticated market segmentation techniques by many companies, they have the ability to more specifically target very well-defined, niche segments. This trends often manifests itself in the diversification of a brand’s product lines, as well necessitating the tailoring of product positioning and messaging for various segments or niches simultaneously.

By remaining as flexible as possible through streamlined packaging, more variation (in terms of both product diversification and product positioning) becomes possible - and better profitability follows.

5 - Saving money on shipping costs:

For companies whose original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) ship their products from overseas locations (e.g., China) to in-country distribution warehouses, shipping costs comprise a significant portion of total cost of goods sold. However, by shipping finished goods to distribution centers in an unpackaged state, companies can ship up to 2-3 times more product per pallet - resulting in significant shipping cost savings.

Taking advantage of recent advances in kitting and packaging can afford significant advantages to electronics manufacturers. These advantages include the ability to avoid the additional cost of relatively last-minute unpacking and repacking, lower shipping costs, and greater responsiveness to making needed product, packaging, or documentation changes due to internal or market demands.



Ernest

Brian Reuter asked:


In today’s environment of economic hardship and intense competition, almost every CEO in America realizes the importance of increasing their organization’s ability to innovate. In fact a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study revealed that CEOs ranked product development second in importance only to innovation as a source of competitive advantage. Former GE executive and author Jack Welch offers this perspective, “…if the rate of change inside the institution is less than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight. The only question is the timing of the end.” The challenge to innovate is great, yet most companies struggle through a disjointed process, often stuck in their traditional way of looking at their business.

Research shows that it takes nearly 300 ideas to achieve a single successful product. “Forward-thinking firms are moving aggressively to make the right choices to improve innovation and product development,” said Ken Amann, Director of Research at consulting and research firm CIMdata. These firms have strategically focused on innovation as an organizational core competency and reinforce this philosophy by (1) focusing the organization on innovation (2) enabling innovation through a continuous injection of new, divergent perspectives (3) converging on the high-value ideas through an objective evaluation process.

How Do They Do It?

Leading innovators know that they can increase the business impact of innovation by injecting an external perspective during idea generation and evaluation. By leveraging the technical knowledge of experts and the evolving needs of lead users they narrow the list of ideas to the prioritized few with the greatest commercial promise.

For more than 20 years, Guideline has helped leading companies enable innovation and converge on the right ideas by providing assistance in organizing and moderating expert forums. The magic occurs within these interactions as the ideas and perspectives of an expert or experts fuse with the knowledge of individuals on the client team. Their combined insight fuels innovation, generating new ideas or improving the feasibility of concepts in play. Let’s look at a few examples that demonstrate how leading innovators have leveraged external insight and expertise to generate, evaluate and prioritize ideas.

Product-Concept Ideation

Need to invigorate a stale ideation process?

Technical experts and leading technology users can be gathered in a forum to discuss unmet needs, limitations of existing solutions, product concepts, and unique product needs. Bringing fresh minds from outside an organization together, in a moderated session, will invariably produce new, solid product concepts. Guideline recently organized and moderated an expert forum for a leading medical products company. The session produced 10 specific new product concepts and in turn fueled additional ideas within the client observer group, generating a total of 40 product concepts.

Product-Concept Testing

Do you have numerous ideas but need an unbiased opinion to help prioritize the list?

A forum of industry experts provides a direct, open platform for gaining objective, independent insight on product-development concepts. Their viewpoint can help you clarify and prioritize ideas with the greatest potential. You can couple this input with in-depth telephone interviews with additional experts and/or leading users. The results will help you uncover barriers to adoption, ability to meet unmet needs, pros/cons of specific product features, and purchaser acceptance. Another of Guideline’s medical products clients used this method to filter and prioritize 10 new product concepts. The experts helped them select the three most commercially promising concepts which subsequently received approval and funding for further development.

Product Concept Risk Analysis

You’ve got the idea and tested the concept, how do you evaluate the external risks associated with developing the product concept?

Engage an industry expert to interact with you and your project team to discuss the specific aspects of the product concept. Moderated interactions can be open or anonymous and are conducted either on-site or via teleconference. Open interactions allow both the expert and the client to be known to each other. Anonymous interactions allow the client to remain anonymous while deriving specific information from the expert(s) for product development. On-site interactions bring the expert(s) to a location for face-to-face meetings, typically for a minimum of half to full day interaction. This provides for more complete interaction between participants. Teleconference meetings are used for shorter interactions.

In a recent interaction, a leading technology-driven consumer packaged goods company hosted a teleconference with an industry expert, moderated by Guidleline. While remaining anonymous, the client team discussed the risks involved in the regulatory approval process for their product concept. The expert’s knowledge of the industry and regulatory-process issues provided the team with alternative perspectives which helped them make a better go/no-go decision based on more realistic estimates of development and approval costs for their product concept.

Best Practices in Service Delivery

What are the key services you must offer along with your new product to be competitive in the market?

A forum of industry experts can be used to assist you in examining critical success factors, such as product qualification, market demands, customer acceptance, and quality system requirements.

Guideline recently moderated an on-site forum of recognized industry experts to determine supply chain management best practices for the high-volume, high-quality, cost-conscious global semiconductor market. The outcome of this expert panel identified and ranked the importance of industry-specific issues, e.g., quality programs such as ISO, TQM, Six Sigma, SPC, FMEA, and correction & control. This allowed the client to focus on the most critical service dimensions for their industry.

As you can see, using external technical and industry experts can provide valuable insights to inspire innovation that leads to winning products and services.

Tags: Business Impact, Business Innovation, Business Research, Ceos, Commercial Promise, Core Competency, Divergent Perspectives, Economic Hardship, Innovators, Ken Amann, Leading Companies, Pricewaterhousecoopers Study, Prioritized, Right Choices, Technical Knowledge