Stock Keeping unit (SKU) and packaging component portfolio control is a critical activity for organisations. Ensuring the correct balance between a commercially advantageous portfolio, whilst minimising unnecessary pack and component variants is a challenge faced by many healthcare product companies as they grow their product range and expand into new markets. Therefore ensuring there are decision making processes in the organisation to manage required levels of complexity is a key aspect of effective pack management.
In this blog series I will describe key features of a complexity management capability in an easy to digest format. I hope you find this information useful. We are always searching for ways to improve our work, so if you have any feedback, please do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected].
Have you got processes to effectively manage order quantities of components and finished packs?
Considering the previous tip on runners, repeaters and strangers, it is important to consider how volumes of components and finished products are managed through the supply chain.
Packaging operations are under high degrees of pressure to maximise efficiency. Where high volume runner products are present it is easy to produce in economic batch sizes and purchase commercially advantageous volumes of components.
However with stranger products, the preferred packaging batch sizes can often result in high levels of inventory of finished packs which are at risk of obsolescence through shelf life expiry. Often this results in repackaging activity to move product from one market to another prior to expiry. In addition the economic order quantities of packaging components can often result in high stock levels of components that have to be written off when a pack change is required.
It is therefore important to manage two dynamics to minimise the risk of obsolescence:
Can you postpone customisation to as late as possible in the supply chain?
There are a number of definitions of postponement, but the one we will use here is the delaying of customisation of a product until as late as possible in the packaging operation.
There are many examples of this:
In all cases it can be seen that the goal is to keep the product as standard as possible for as far through the packaging operation, and then only make it market specific at the latest possible operation, perhaps against a specific market order. This can present a number of challenges for most operations:
Can you late customise components and products?
Our definition of late customisation is the physical modification of standard components and products to add features or information, making them product or market specific. Examples would include on-line printing of content and over-labelling and may be undertaken downstream of the packaging facility.
On-line component printing is becoming increasingly common, but depends upon the type of component and information required:
Over-labelling can vary between simple printed labels (pharmacy labels) to complex labels (e.g. including sealed pouches for leaflets).
A few considerations with late-customisation and over-labelling:
This is the fifth of a series of 7 blogs giving a view of methods to deal with packaging complexity. Should you have any questions about this or any of my other blogs, or would simply like to request a copy of my booklets, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly on my email. [dt_sc_email emailid="[email protected]"/]