Increasing competitiveness through concurrent development of product and packaging

Extending the product development process to also include the concurrent design of product and packaging is expected to increase efficiency and effectiveness in the development process. Apart from the obvious advantage of reducing the lead times of the development project, improving environmental impact by reducing the consumption of raw material due to the possibility of facilitating a "tailor made" packaging of the product is also anticipated. For the development of the product-to-be, the packaging might provide alternative, less costly, solutions. The main objective is to establish the actual interest in or need for introducing concurrent development of product and package in the product development process. In this paper the findings from a literature review and two surveys are reported. The surveys are performed in 40 Swedish companies, half of them in the food industry and the other half in the pharmaceutical industry. From an overall perspective of competitiveness, the findings demonstrate not only the relevance of introducing concurrent development of product and packaging in the product development process, but also that this introduction should be based on the concept of integration.