We have all heard and have been told at one point or the other in our career to “do more with less”. Companies brand these as “culture of productivity” with the goal of improving margins and reinvesting money back into the business to enable growth. In the world of packaging it means improving packaging economics without compromising on consumer value proposition, with equal or better quality, & equal or lower risk to manufacturing & supply-chain. Achieving productivity seems daunting particularly when there are no low hanging fruits and there is a lack of holistic approach to accurately evaluate the option being considered early in the process.

One can think of organizing packaging cost savings ideas in the following buckets.

• Right Weighting:
  What is the right weight of the package i.e. is there an opportunity to reduce weight? Answering this question requires a deep analysis of current specifications and whether any attributes are negotiable, fit-for-use in supply-chain, and impact on consumer value proposition (purchase intent, likeability). Ideas for right weighting can come from benchmarking of industry weights, competitor product tear downs, innovation in design/materials that can make product more efficient.

• Optimize Operations and Supply-Chain:
  Purposefully designed packaging to improve efficiency, minimize change over on production line, reduce downtime, and/or eliminate/minimize waste are all good ideas for lowering cost.

• Improve Sourcing Efficiency:
  Key question to ask and analyze is the make vs. buy decision. This helps in identifying vertical integration opportunities and significantly lowering packaging cost. Investigating alternate suppliers with better cost is another option.

Advancing Ideas Using Structured Approach

An integrated value and risk-based approach will help filter and advance ideas with merit into reality i.e. savings. A design to value (DtV) based framework will help organize and prioritize ideas based on features that customers value and importantly not dilute or remove existing features that are important to customer. A risk assessment (FMEA process) should be applied to those ideas to help further prioritize ideas into a 2 X 2 matrix of ease of implementation vs. impact. A cross-functional coordinated effort is required to test filtered ideas, validate hypothesis, and inform of any additional risk or surprises prior to full scale implementation.