Increasingly shorter product cycles and re-action times create more challenges for globally harmonized packaging management. This year's annual meeting of the Global Pack-aging Alliance (GPA) hosted by rlc focused on viable solutions. The GPA is a consortium of globally active, medium sized packaging companies which coordinate their production processes and quality standards to guarantee a globally consistent brand presence for international consumer goods manufacturers.
"Swiftness is becoming increasingly important in our industry. Worldwide rollouts of new products need to be faster, secure and standardized. Globally harmonized packaging management is the key," explains GPA spokesman and rlc | packaging group CEO Hans-Christian Bestehorn. The goal is to supply packaging that reliably meets high-quality standards, offers unique added value and is produced in accordance with the strict-est safety regulations.
With the rlc I packaging group leading the way, GPA member companies are prepared to face the challenges. Alliance members communicate in depth about the demands on global and individual market levels. As one of the founding members of the GPA, rlc invited international GPA repre-sentatives to Hanover for this year's meeting. In line with the "Rethink Global Packaging" theme, the packaging manufacturers discussed ways of making global packaging management even more efficient for their customers.
In addition to sharing know-how among GPA members, there was a focus on organizing secure data transfers within a centralized system. Achieving globally consistent packaging design is also supported by expertise from brandpack. Initially developed by rlc, the concept of a packaging de-sign agency working in close cooperation with production operations and the industry is now implemented by several GPA member companies. At the meeting, rlc also demonstrated how key aspects of its lean philosophy can be used as a viable approach to implementing efficient, harmonized processes on a global level.
