EDITORIAL
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Year in, year out, I hear the same concern: Packaging is often treated as an afterthought by some medical device manufacturers. Packagers are often brought in well after product research and development—perhaps even after product engineering. In these cases, packaging teams have little time for innovation. They might stick with familiar styles or materials and whatever their existing packaging machines can handle. (With new machinery installations often requiring six months to a year, companies rushing to meet a launch deadline certainly won’t wait for new packaging machinery!)
However, demands are changing these days. As pressures to reduce costs increase, packagers are being asked to maintain performance with thinner, lighter structures. Companies may also be changing packaging in order to move toward sustainability. (For more on what sustainability could mean for drug and device packaging, see the Industry Outlook feature beginning on page 16.) Packagers are being asked to utilize emerging technologies—but often a bit too late to pull it off.
One senior packaging engineer I spoke to recently has an idea. “The packaging function needs to have strong influence within research and development,” says this professional, who works for a maker of devices for the treatment of atrial fibrillation.
Working in concert with R&D could enable packaging departments to better support quality initiatives and continuous improvement programs, he adds. These are priorities for many companies today and may also support efforts to reduce costs. “We want to be involved in these programs, but we need time to stay on top of our game. We have the new ISO 11607 standard to follow. Companies often underestimate the time needed to change packaging.”
This professional was the company’s first full-time packaging engineer. “My resources are me,” says the senior packaging engineer. “If a strong influence is maintained with R&D, they can better support packaging when needed because of the focus on high-priority projects and initiatives.”
Even if resources did not expand, the awareness of projects under development would give him enough notice to prepare—and perhaps innovate.
Packaging school graduates share this professional’s dream. “Packagers should work with product development if companies want to get the most out of packaging,” says Eric Steigelman, a 2008 Rochester Institute of Technology graduate. Otherwise, “companies are not being efficient. They could cut out time and steps by utilizing packaging engineers.” Firms relying solely on “one person” or “just on suppliers” are taking unneeded risks, he says.
To attract talent to the industry, device manufacturers may wish to consider adding a little package engineering to R&D—or at least a little R&D to package engineering.
The senior packaging engineer is currently reporting to operations, where his focus has mainly been on meeting numbers and timelines. But with cost reduction, sustainability, quality, and continuous improvement relying somewhat on package engineering, meeting numbers or timelines may only be possible if the package engineer is part of product research and development.
Daphne Allen
Editor
