"Streamlining the packaging production process with reference to the automation of package labelling"

The pharmaceutical industry depends on many automated process-control and quality-assurance systems to ensure that batch production is carried out repeatedly, reliably and accurately. Yet it’s amazing to see how little automation and control is applied when it comes to manufacturing the artwork required to produce product labels. In this article I look at the role of Automated Artwork Generation systems and examine the quality, speed and cost reductions that can be achieved.

All my working life I have been involved in artwork and printing, and during this time I have visited many pharmaceutical and consumer goods manufacturing plants around the world. What always puts a wry smile on my face is that everyone thinks their problems are unique and so difficult to solve. Well, from my experience there is a common theme to most labelling issues and I believe we are starting to acknowledge not only the importance of an efficient labelling process, but also realising that the Automated Artwork Generation Solutions now being deployed by companies such as Unilever can facilitate a significant improvement in process, reliability, cycle time and cost.

Over the years manufacturing processes have dramatically improved, wastage is down, efficiency is up, all whilst delivering quality levels that would have seemed impossible not so many years ago. In this environment, if there was a manufacturing process in your business, that was critical to shipping, warehousing, usage, marketing and was the cause of many FDA product recalls, then I’m sure it would have some significant attention. This is the artwork process.

So why is it that, when it comes to artwork, the industry accepts a production process that on average rejects over 75% of the output?

Think I’m exaggerating? Ask a question in your business, “When we circulate an artwork proof for approval, how often is it approved the first time?” I would not be surprised if you found the answer to be “Never!” In fact, my perception is that the average number of re-work cycles is around three. The worst I ever found was seventeen! Just think about this for a minute, your business knows what to put on the label, you brief your supplier, they provide a proof, you then ask for changes. Now repeat this process three times, it’s hardly efficient!

LABEL AND BRAND CONSISTENCY

Depending on a person’s job function, the importance of consistency varies within the context. To marketing, consistent brand image builds awareness, confidence and sales, to legal, consistent use of statements is pivotal, and to manufacturing, it’s the consistent position of batch coding areas and barcodes that matters. Even with all the effort invested, pick up a range of products and I’m sure you will find many inconsistencies, and it gets worse when you roll out across multiple countries.

Why? Because the way artwork is currently produced makes it nearly impossible to easily re-use data. Due to the nature of the artwork creation process, same data is input and stored within many artworks, making it difficult to track and keep consistent.

QA BOTTLENECKS

In any process we’re most efficient when we do things only once.

Much of the content we see on a label will have been pre-approved in an earlier process. Some of the contents may even have been part of a license submission and therefore consistency and correct usage become even more paramount.

A typical artwork process consists of manufacturer providing data to an artwork studio. This studio will then filter the data based on experience, then utilising desktop tools such as Adobe Illustrator to create artwork. So, however well you have controlled and validated your data, you lose this control during the artwork production process, the result being rigorous QA inspections.

The artwork proof is then routed for approval and is the focus of extensive QA checks, designed to ensure that the content provided has been used correctly and in its entirety. So we check what we already have checked. Factor in that most artwork will go through three or more iterations, with inspections required after each iteration, you can start to see how resources are wasted across many departments.

AUTOMATED ARTWORK

The concept behind Automated Artwork Generation is to take the content required for artwork production, and without any filtering or manual process, generate artwork. The key objectives are to reduce process time and the opportunity for errors that are inherent in the conventional artwork production process described above.

As with most simple concepts, the reality of creating a usable solution is anything but simple. Labels have many varying requirements and ensuring that a solution can handle the many complexities thrown up by different designs, markets and pack formats was in fact a very complex undertaking.

Much of the complexity comes from the objectives we set, which includes an interface for the Automated Artwork Generation (AAG) server designed to interface to any existing application. We believe this reduces the impact on validation, removes the need to duplicate and store data, facilitates a faster deployment and an on-going reduced cost of ownership.

CONTROLLING THE LAYOUT

Both Marketing and Manufacturing have requirements for consistency relating to the aesthetic appearance of the label including aspects such as size, format and the positioning of elements.

In the automated artwork process the control of the layout and format of is provided by a template. In Kallik’s technology the template can be created offline using a dedicated template creation software tool with the resulting file saved in Extensible Markup Language (XML) format, an industry standard for or data exchange.

THE CONTENT

Content should be input only once, approved only once and used many times, for this we need to think about managing the data separately from the template. This concept allows data to use the same data with many templates ensuring consistency across many label formats.

A good example of this can be seen in the deployment at Unilever. The solution consists of utilising data from SAP and combining this with data stored in Kallik’s AMS-Trade. The combined data file is processed using programmable business rules ensuring 100% consistency and repeatability. The resulting XML file is then transmitted to the Automated Artwork server and artwork is produced. Taking this approach, Unilever Deo RTC Europe has reduced the cycle time of its labelling innovation process by 98% - processing a three-month backlog of 400 pending artwork designs in just a few hours.

Peter Garratt, Packaging Technician Unilever Deo RTC Europe, comments: “Kallik's AMS Trade solution is exceptionally simple to use, perfect for non-technical users wishing to generate a TUC label artwork in seconds. What's more, we now have one consistent record as the source for both on-line labelling and off-line printing needs."

LEAD TIMES

Automated Artwork Generation provides the benefit of reducing the number of re-work cycles, thereby eliminating redundancy and saving resources. However there are some processes that are unavoidable such as last minute legal changes or reactions to fluctuations in market conditions. These unpredictable events cannot ever be fully eradicated.

What Automated Artwork Generation provides is time, time to make necessary changes, or better still more time to get it right before committing to an artwork.

Let’s take a typical example of one label where the artwork is produced and then changes are requested two more times. So in effect, we are creating and routing this artwork three times.

As you can see, assuming the approval process stays at the same value for both processes, the overall process time is reduced by 40%. A typical artwork production time is five days. Now before you all scream at me, I know it is possible to produce quicker than that, and most companies can quote lots of “same day” turnarounds. But this is not sustainable, nor does it have a positive impact on quality.

Whereas an Automated Artwork server will produce an artwork in twenty seconds, day in day out, always the same quality and always available. I did a bench mark on my Dell laptop, believe me it’s nothing special, and achieved the equivalent of 1400 artworks over a 24 hour period! In reality what this means is that you can change a claim, an image or a barcode in minutes rather than days, delivering the opportunity for late stage changes, increased company flexibility, reduced costs and overall process reduction and probably most importantly: quality. Automated Artwork always contains the data you request, thus significantly reducing the risks of product recalls and other labelling related issues.

CONCLUSION

With millions of dollars invested in software solutions designed to manage data and the manufacturing process, it seems a logical extension to leverage these systems and their data to facilitate Automated Artwork Production. This may be some way off being the norm and I expect that in the “short to medium” term we will see these Automated Artwork servers being driven by stand alone data management solutions such as Kallik’s AMS-PDM (Product Data Manager) until such time that the larger enterprise solutions have been configured to store the required artwork data.

As a final word, with the FDA now receiving XML files as part of the licence submission process, why not use the same XML file to assist in the artwork production? Now there’s a thought….

The author can be contacted at neil.gleghorn@kallik.com