Introduction
The SAP PLM solution for Process Industries has made substantial progress recently through enhancement packs, both in terms of UI and functionality. One area that may receive attention in future is how the solution covers product packaging. Process industries (PI), especially those related to consumer products (such as food and beverages, personal care, hygiene products, etc.), attach great importance to packaging design and a significant portion of product design efforts is spent on designing the packaging, artwork and labelling. They use specialized software to handle different aspects of this matter. There is a variety of software available to support the structural design of packaging (the so called packaging CAD applications), for creating artworks, and for ensuring labelling compliance. Different product groups within the same organization sometimes use different tools to accomplish the same thing. In general, such tools are preferred that allow maximum creativity, while integration is of secondary importance. This is understandable, but over time, the organization realizes that only an integrated process allows effective collaboration and shorter design cycles.
How does SAP PLM
help?
Well, to start with, Recipe Development has a special specification
category called Packaging that you can use for creating specifications that represent
packaging items, and these specifications can be linked to material masters.
When you add packaging specification in a recipe, it is automatically excluded
from composition calculations, etc. You can store various properties of the
packaging material in the specification, and this helps in searching for a
packaging that can be reused. This is the basic functionality offered by Recipe
Development. Still, we are leaving out two important aspects – the geometric
design (CAD models) of packaging, and the artwork.
CAD integration
SAP recently announced acquisition of the Engineering
Control Center (ECTR) solution that was previously offered by their partner, DSC.
This solution replaces the earlier ‘CAD Desktop’. Can it be used in the context
of packaging? Potentially, yes. But there are some gaps that SAP or their
partners need to address before that. First of all, the ECTR needs installation
of connectors specifically designed for the CAD application in question. These
connectors are available for most popular mechanical CAD solutions (AutoCAD,
Creo, SolidWorks, NX, Catia, etc.), but not yet for any of the popular ‘packaging
CAD’ solutions. Another issue is – would the existing functionality of ECTR be
sufficient? As of today, ECTR allows you to link document info records (that
hold the CAD files) with material masters. Specification masters do not enter
the picture. But SAP PLM for PI is all about specifications and recipes.
Extending the ECTR to handle specification masters may be a possible solution,
but it may also overcomplicate the tool. A really intelligent solution will
link specification properties with document characteristics that can be ultimately
derived from CAD. So, for example, if a box designed in CAD weighs 10 g, this
info should flow from CAD to the linked DIR and then to the ‘weight’ property
of the packaging specification. A practical solution would be to perhaps not
use packaging specifications at all, and introduce packaging once basic MBOM is
generated out of the recipe.
Artwork
The artwork for a product packaging is usually a file (or a
set of files) that can be handled using existing DMS functions. Something lightweight
like EasyDMS is most appropriate for the users of this department, who would
want to spend more of their time in creative works in Adobe Illustrator or
similar applications. But there is a catch. These applications are mostly run
on Apple computers, and EasyDMS runs only on Windows! Secondly, these
applications usually have their own ‘workflows’ which have to be suitably
blended within the overall process. I am tempted to think out the box (package?)
here. ECTR already has EasyDMS-like features (drag and drop an original file to
create a DIR, for example). Also, ECTR being a Java application, should be able
to run on an Apple machine as well. Can SAP create a lighter version of ECTR
for this use case? Maybe they can, though it doesn’t appear to be on their near
term roadmap.
Labelling
Labelling is where SAP PLM can play on its current
strengths. The label creation functionality allows you to generate a label out
of a recipe or specification, and then modify and enrich with additional
information for regulatory compliance, etc. The label set (so called since it
can hold multiple labels for the same recipe, each representing a different SKU
and/or target market) is a technical object by itself, and can have workflows,
statuses and links to documents. A very useful feature is the xml output that
can potentially be used as input for artwork applications.
What is my take?
All in all, mapping the business process and objects in packaging
represents a very interesting challenge for a PLM solution. SAP PLM has many
pieces which fit straightaway into the puzzle, and some which need to be cut
around the edges! Partners have a great opportunity of creating and selling a
packaged solution around these ideas. Packaging, as I said, matters a lot!
