In many industrial organisations, packaging management appears, at first glance, to be well organised. Products are packaged, orders are dispatched, and problems seem to be few and far between. There are often agreements, work instructions or ‘this is how we do things here’ practices in place.
But appearances can be deceiving.
When you look more closely, a different picture often emerges. Packaging choices turn out to vary depending on the employee, the product, or even the moment. What makes sense to one person is done slightly differently by another. Not out of unwillingness, but because the underlying framework is missing.
The result?
A process that appears stable, but in reality remains dependent on individual interpretation.
You can see this, for example, in:
As long as this isn’t made explicit, it feels as though everything is under control.
Many organisations have documentation lying around somewhere. Instructions, guidelines or previous decisions. But the question is not whether they exist; the question is whether they actually provide guidance.
Are they understood?
Are they applied consistently?
And perhaps even more importantly: is it clear why they exist?
Without the latter, agreements remain vulnerable. They are circumvented as soon as practical circumstances demand it.
This is where the tension arises that causes many organisations to get stuck. On the one hand, there is a need for flexibility: adapting quickly, acting pragmatically, resolving whatever arises. On the other hand, there is a need for predictability: control over quality, costs and risks.
Without clear standardisation, flexibility quickly becomes arbitrariness. And arbitrariness is difficult to manage.
The question is therefore not whether you have your packaging ‘sorted’, but to what extent you actually control it.
The impact of variation in packaging is rarely made immediately apparent. Problems are often resolved before they escalate. A damaged product is repackaged. Extra handling is seen as part of the process. Lost time gets lost in the day-to-day operations. But that is precisely where the problem lies.
When packaging choices aren’t standardised, the consequences spread throughout the entire supply chain. Not as one major incident, but as a series of small deviations that together have a structural impact.
Consider:
These costs are rarely directly linked to packaging management. They fall under different departments and therefore disappear from view.
In situations where packaging choices lack clear justification, there is a strong reliance on experience. Staff ‘know’ how things should be done, but cannot always explain or pass this on.
This seems efficient, until:
At that point, it becomes clear that knowledge is not safeguarded, but scattered across people’s minds. And that makes the process vulnerable.
Packaging used in a slightly different way seems harmless. Until it leads to extra movements, reduced protection or inefficient stacking. One deviation is not a problem. Neither are ten deviations a day, strictly speaking.
But structurally, they lead to:
And perhaps even more importantly: they make it virtually impossible to make targeted improvements.
As long as it is unclear where and why variation arises, optimisation remains based on assumptions rather than insight.
The difference between organisations that have a firm grasp of their packaging process and those that continue to react to problems rarely lies in resources or personnel. It lies in the way packaging is approached.
Not as an operational task, but as part of the broader supply chain strategy.
Many organisations get bogged down in documenting how things should be done: work instructions, checklists and guidelines. That is an important step, but it is not enough.
Real control only emerges when it is clear:
At that point, standardisation shifts from a static document to a dynamic management tool.
In mature organisations, standardisation is not a constraint, but a means of making complexity manageable. It ensures:
Here, a conscious decision is also made as to where customisation is needed and where it is not. That balance makes it possible to operate in a way that is both flexible and scalable.
Most organisations find themselves somewhere between complete ad hoc operation and strategic management. But exactly where, often remains unclear.
And that is precisely the problem.
Without insight into their own maturity level, improvement remains based on gut feeling. Initiatives are launched, but lack coherence. Results remain inconsistent.
To truly get a grip on packaging management, more is needed than isolated optimisations. It requires a structured approach to determine:
The Industrial Packaging Maturity Model helps organisations to gain this insight. Not by providing immediate solutions, but by clarifying where you stand today and where the greatest opportunities for improvement lie.
Because only when you know where the variation lies can you determine where standardisation adds value.
Start your IPMM assessment here!
