SAP PLM for Process Industries: Packaging Matters!

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!