INTEGRATING DESIGN AND PRODUCTION OF PACKAGING MATERIALS
01 April 2002 - NNE A/S

A close linking of the design and production phases is important when planning packaging of pharmaceutical products. The two phases interact, and integration will ensure flexible pro-duction and competitive advantages.

Whether cartons, tablet containers, blisters, labels or inserts, it is of utmost importance to coordinate all phases in the life cycle of packaging materials. Particularly important is a close exchange of ideas, facts, knowledge, and experience between design phase and production concept. If the in-volved parties fail to communicate, the result may be ineffective production conditions. Conditions that are rarely visible to the customer in the end product, but result in annoyances and increased time and cost.

Cost in the form of larger investments and higher operation cost, such as poorer utili-zation of production equipment and personnel. So there is a close connection between integration of design and production and competitiveness.
This article does not aim to make a detailed analysis of how all factors in the design and production phases interact. The purpose is to give an overall indication of some of the aspects that may be par-ticularly useful to focus on.

A number of factors are critical to the optimal design of packaging for a given product, and just one neglected detail can mean extra cost in the production phase. If e.g. the erection of the carton in connection with cartonning is wrong, it may become necessary to reverse part of the machine.

The following are examples of conditions that are also easy to change in the design phase, and which have considerable influence on the production equipment.
End Load or Top Load carton, location of imprint, product identification as visual recognition or bar code, size and number of inserts, location of text on inserts in relation to folds. In the design phase designers and engineers work with a number of requirements and wishes to the finished packaging material, such as :

Regulatory requirements, such as:
- Product ID
- Batch information
- Product information
- Special requirements to primary packaging
Functionality
Functional requirements to packaging, such as:
- Keep product parts together and have room for all parts.
- Be ergonomically easy to handle while fulfilling the requirements of some countries to child-proof packaging.
- Protect the product against humidity, light, transportation damage, and other external impact and protect the environment against impact from the product.
- Contain information on units in the packaging. Design of labels is thereby an integrated part of the packaging design, as labels must be dimensioned to be able to contain all necessary information.
- Incorporation of special tactile markings for blind and partially sighted people, either as Braielle writing or Tactile code.
- Units should fit into shipping boxes or other transport packaging.

The packaging design contains branding factors that can strengthen and maintain marketing values, such as product recognition and security.

Choice of material and environmental considerations
Choice of material is based on a number of conditions, which in addition to price may be: Barrier properties, surface properties, workability, modification processes as well as disposal and environmental considerations.

Also the minimum mate-rial consumption is a design parameter. Depending on material and process, there may be limitations in the choice of design and colour.

The main principle is to develop packaging with an eye to all links in the chain.
The increasing competition combined with the continuous development in technology means that new products and variants are marketed in increasing numbers. The trend goes towards smaller batch sizes, meaning more changeovers. Requirements to flexibility in production are therefore in-creasing.

If packaging lines are also to be used for clinical trials, which are mainly small batches and involve different products in different combinations, the effect is intensified.

To limit the need for changeovers of production equipment, it can be a great advantage to think in product families, i.e. divide all packaging types in groups with the same properties. Product families may also consider branding factors. Another aspect of a packaging strategy can be modularisation, breaking down the production process in elements that can be used in more packaging types.

For instance, a suitable design of the size and cavities of a blister may enable use of the same blister for different products and avoid changeovers. This is a compromise and may for some products have to be weighed up against an increase in material consumption and larger cartons (increased volume) compared to dedicated packaging materials, which may be optimised according to the sin-gle product. The large variation in product shapes will also make increased demands on the interac-tion between the filling and the way blisters guide products into the cavities.

It takes time and requires a new product registration to modify packaging. The design should there-fore as far as possible allow for changes in design and process without requiring a new registration. In the design phase it should be decided whether the packaging process is to take place on existing equipment (with major or minor modifications), or whether new equipment should be procured. This requires insight in both own production equipment and the equipment at the supplier of pack-aging material.

Design for manufacturing also means that the design phase should clarify conditions such as:
- Manual or automatic packaging process – some types of cartons are suitable for manual packag-ing and some for automatic packaging.
- The final detailed design, e.g. size and form of flaps, etc., may depend on the actual production equipment.
- Inhouse print - inline print solutions are limited to certain types of cartons.
- Choice of material: It should be taken into consideration that certain materials have better ma-chine technical properties than others, e.g. PVC is easier to cut and punch than PET. But PVC is more harmful to the environment.
- Also the choice of cardboard material is of importance, as length and direction of fibers should be suitable for high-speed production.
- The choice of label material and glue is important. Certain label types go well with glass, while others are more suitable for plastic surfaces of e.g. devices. If Sleeve's or Tamper Proof are cho-sen as labelling, it should be possible to supply the basic material in a controlled and often direc-tion-oriented shrinkable form.

The development of new products is often a long and very expensive process without any guarantee of success. As soon as a product is on the market, it is important that the payback starts as early as possible. Effective packaging is an important element.

The need for increased flexibility, more output, and the tendency towards smaller batch sizes and more changeovers, increases requirements to machine speed and changeover time. Production lines become increasingly complex, requiring longer periods of time for effective line clearance, which again decreases the average operation time of the line. This is where product families can help re-duce the number of parameters that need adjusting before a batch.

The reasons for procuring new production equipment may vary. Capacity requirements, strategic considerations, technology, productivity, and compliance may all be of importance. It is not neces-sarily only a decision on process technique.
In some instances it is a sound business disposition to outsource part or all of the production. In such cases standardization of packaging materials in product families will be an advantage for the production situation of the producer.

Requirements to change from manual to automatic production of the same packaging types will also require changes in design.

All in all there is a great challenge in designing packaging material in a way that enables the use of different production methods without affecting the end product significantly. In addition, produc-tion equipment should allow for design changes without requiring similar modification of produc-tion equipment.

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