Concurrent Design of Product and Package - Extending the Concept of IPD

As a result of the globalisation of the world economy, many enterprises that previously confined their business activities to national markets are now focusing on broader international markets, thus forming the basis for the establishment of global enterprises. In addition to the extension of markets, these global companies also seek cost reductions through scale economics in logistics, marketing, product development, production and purchasing, and through focused manufacturing and/or assembly operations - Christopher [5], Porter [10]. In order to contribute to the establishment of global enterprises, an interdisciplinary research project has been launched at the Department of Design Sciences, Lund University, Sweden, as a collaborative effort between two of its divisions Machine Design and Packaging Logistics. The overall objective established for the project is to: facilitate the establishment of successful global enterprises by providing methods, techniques and an overall procedure model for integrating packaging logistics into the product development process.” By extending the concept of Integrated Product Development (IPD) to include the concurrent design of product and packaging, increased efficiency and effectiveness in the product development process are conceivable. Apart from the apparent advantage of reducing the time to market, environmental impacts in terms of a reduction in the consumption of raw materials due to the possibility of facilitating a “tailor-made” packaging of the product are also conceivable. As a result of the development of more efficient and effective packaging of the products, a reduction in emissions from the distribution of the products is also expected. For the development of the product-to-be, the packaging might provide alternative, less costly, solutions; this especially applies to those products, which have to withstand major structural loads during the distribution phase of the product life cycle. The overall concept of integrating relevant activities from the packaging logistics area into the IPD process has been introduced in a previous paper - see Bjärnemo et al [1]. In the paper presented here, the main objective is to:” establish the industrial relevance of introducing the concurrent design of product and packaging thus supporting or rejecting the key element in the previously developed integration concept.” The secondary objective is to: “obtain more detailed information on the actual handling of the interaction between product and packaging design in industry.” The latter information is intended to be used either for the further development of extended IPD concept or for providing a more detailed view why the integration concept has to be reacted. In order to obtain the information requested, an explorative survey has been performed in Swedish industry. The findings from this survey and its implications, as outlined above, are reported her