Far from being the boring old brown box of old, believe it or not, packaging is a pretty high-tech product these days. Whether it’s smart labels, RFID tags, nanotechnology, tamper-evident tops and any number of other new ideas hitting the market, there is no doubt that consumers are set to benefit from a whole host of novel applications in the future.

What consumers don’t see, though, is how the entire industry is changing to accommodate technological change in the packaging sector as designers, suppliers, brand owners and retailers strive for new ways of saving money and boosting productivity, as well as adding novel features to the product.
René Delbar is the senior VP of business development at Esko Graphics headquartered in Gent, Belgium, and his company is among those leading the technological changes. o Graphics is the world leader in ‘packaging pre-production solutions’. In part, this covers software applications spanning a range of integrated product lines, including graphics, structural and project management elements.

Delbar is keen to highlight how technological change is re-shaping the market. “Traditionally, you had the brand manager at one end of the chain and at the other end you had the retailers, with lots of smaller service providers in between. Today, the industry structure is changing within that chain as functions move up, down and across,” Delbar explains. “The other big thing today is globalization. We see much more manufacturing becoming decentralized. There are more regional variations and the manufacturing is moving closer to the raw goods and customers. But at the same time, we also see increasing centralization of brand management.”

The combined effect of all these changes has created a pressing need to work faster and more efficiently. As a result, the packaging industry starts to develop entirely new ways of working that can provide the necessary control and support for centralized brand managers, while allowing each supplier along the chain to exploit opportunities to improve efficiency.
A prime example can be seen in Esko’s latest software modules, which carry structural information about e.g. a box within the same computer file as the graphics data. As a result, the program can tell automatically where a crease will appear for a given calliper and grade of paper – information that the graphic designer will utilize to avoid any subsequent design errors.
In other words, the conditions are now ripe for a digital revolution to sweep across the sector.

Driving change
Delbar believes that some of the developments that are now possible are so fundamental that they will take some time to become widespread. But he also points out that the potential benefits in terms of productivity and error elimination are so great that it is hard to see the sector failing to embrace the changes to come. Among just some of the new capabilities, players in the supply chain will see:
• much closer cooperation between structural and packaging designers as the information for each aspect lies embedded within the same file
• digital files that allow anyone to view a high resolution 3-D image of a pack design within an Adobe Acrobat PDF file
• brand owners using database driven systems to automatically control product variations and line extensions from central locations
• design programs that warn designers about making changes that will lead to errors or sub-optimal outcomes in subsequent production or printing systems
• approval and sign-off systems that allow late-changes to be made in a tightly controlled and structured manner to reduce the risk of errors.
Plus, a whole lot more besides.

As Delbar explains, equipment producers and converters have done a great job for boosting productivity within each stage of the work process. But today, for those already operating modern machines there are very few innovations that will offer more than a few percentage points in efficiency improvements. On the other hand, there is still great potential to be gained from integrating entire processes across the supply chain, and that is what this digital revolution provides.

“For example, because the management system is able to collect all the data between the order entry in CRM and the workflow server in production, you’ll be able to see that you need plates in 2 days, but you have not yet received final approval. The system will automatically act as an early warning system and it can track all the other timing and cost information,” Delbar says. “We can even allow the user to specify the board grade and ink and we can work out how much ink you’ll need for a job.”

Making tools
Today, the supply chain is under more time pressure than ever, so every actor has to be a lot tighter on process control. But each player can also benefit if they have the tools to gauge the impact of their decisions on other stages in the supply chain. For example, a designer doesn’t necessarily even have to understand why he can’t go to a smaller typeface when the parameters are already locked into the system.

Manufacturers of consumer and other products are more and more aware of the financial benefits that such wholesale system integration can offer in terms of slashing packaging costs. For example, the makers of the X-Box saved millions in logistics costs through a minor change to the box design.

Retailers too are catching on to the potential of optimizing the entire supply chain, rather than any of the individual processes within it. Indeed, as the big supermarket chains flex their muscles, even major brand owners will have to fall into line. One major consumer goods company recently caved in under pressure to move from different shaped bottles for a shampoo range to different colours. The retailer simply did not want the hassle or added cost of dealing with different sized products.

Other companies stand to benefit even more. “There is a tobacco group that designs all its cigarette packs worldwide from one site, but they must comply with regional health warnings that are different in every country and all in the local language. If the job is automated and database driven they can use auto inserts for every packaging design anywhere in the world. The same goes for pharma products, where compliance is vital, but it can even apply to chips and cereal boxes where you have a master design with variable data applications,” Delbar points out.

All this has profound implications for the packaging sector of course and it seems clear that as the digital revolution gains momentum, the world of packaging is set to become even more high-tech in the future.