http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/ en Copyright 2007 Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:28:16 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss I spend my day about involved in many a rout. Collecting revisions from another one just when I thought the project done. But wait, changes are a more… Too late, it’s out the door! While clearly in jest, this is pretty close to “life in the day of” for a packaging manager at your typical CPG or life sciences company. Each day, they’re tasked with trafficking hundreds, maybe even thousands, of packaging or collateral projects throughout an organization. And this is no easy task. Just think, a typical product launch involves hundreds of interactions – between field sales and focus groups, promotional agencies and production companies, legal teams and licensing departments. Now compound that with said number of projects and the number is truly staggering. With so many touch-points human error is inevitable. Unfortunately for the poor traffic manager, such errs fall on her shoulders. What’s more, they’re costly mistakes. For each day a product is late to the market, dollars can be lost. Take, for example, a product like the popularly marketed drug Celebrex. With sales reaching $3.3 billion, that’s $9 million a day that could be left on the table! Or looked at another way, since the bulk of brands that make it to market first end up owning the majority of market share – regardless of whether or not theirs is the superior product – even a few days’ time can end up putting a product at a serious disadvantage. “So?” you say, “We know The Packaging Manager’s process isn’t perfect…we expect rework and project delays, and besides, there’s no better way.” But there is. Companies need to scrap the tools of yesteryear’s traffic manager. No more can photocopied sign-off sheets suffice. Call an end to the myriad of untranslatable annotations scrawled on design document. Call off all office stop-bys as a means of relieving project gridlock. Do away with Excel as a project tracker for your work load, it has much better uses. The whole process begs for systemization by its very nature. It’s complex but repetitive and as such, technology needs to be the enabler. By automating the packaging process and making the shift from manual to digital processes, you can enhance online process initiation, online review of designs, online approval, easy collaboration between design, brand, legal, regulatory, manufacturing etc. In short, facilitate and expedite the Packaging Manager’s job. Darlene Hollywood President, D. Hollywood PR http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/06/ode_to_the_packaging_manager.html http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/06/ode_to_the_packaging_manager.html Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:28:16 -0500 here for some additional thoughts on best in class practices for Life Sciences Susan Roberts Director of Marketing Paxonix, a MeadWestvaco company]]> http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/05/pharmaceutical_packaging_and_l.html http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/05/pharmaceutical_packaging_and_l.html Tue, 29 May 2007 16:32:00 -0500 Private Label Magazine and our favorite, Consumer Goods Technology. We’d love to hear about your private label challenges and how you are accomplishing these kinds of gargantuan tasks. Here are our thoughts on how to hit the ball out of the park on private label: A packaging workflow process, well implemented, enabled by technology and well understood within your organization, is the most effective means of addressing these day-to-day challenges so you can meet critical, contractually-required turnarounds. Agreed? Susan Roberts Director of Marketing Paxonix, a MeadWestvaco company ]]> http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/05/package_or_perish.html http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/05/package_or_perish.html Tue, 22 May 2007 09:20:36 -0500 1. How is my data protected from loss? A SaaS provider should provide multiple backups. Both locally and offsite. There should be a auditable chain of custody for your backed up data. 2. How is my data protected from unauthorized access? Only a minimal set of authorized personnel should have administrative access to your data. 3. How often do you test restore data? How do you verify its integrity? Sample data should be test restored quarterly at a minimum (depending on the backup mechanism used). It should be restored to a point where it can be verified through the application that uses it. 4. Are there any single points of failure? The answer should be no. If there are single points of failure you should ask how long the system will be down if that item fails. 5. How do you deal with the loss of single server? A data center? There should be a documented plan for recovering from the failure of any component required to deliver your services from a server to an entire data center. Again, you should ask how long the system will be unavailable in the case of any of those failures. 6. Can you provide example procedures for the deployment, upgrade, and maintenance of your system? A provider should be able to provide you with samples of high level procedures and detailed installation instructions they use. 7. Can you provide a record that proves you have conducted these procedures in the past? They should be able to provide a record of when any change has occurred to their systems including who performed the change. 8. What Service Level Agreement options are available? What do they cover? The provider should offer at least one tier of a Service Level Agreement that at a minimum covers system availability. 9. What regulatory standards are you in compliance with? 21 CRF Part 11, Sarbanes Oxley, HIPPA, etc You should look for providers that are already living under relevant regulations or regulations that have the same intent. 10. Can I talk to one of your existing customers in my industry? The best way to find out about a provider is via a existing customer. Make sure to ask how they handle problems. If they say there are no problems then get another reference. Every relationship has rough patches and how those are handled is a key indicator for the quality of the provider. John Horton Director of Technology Operations Paxonix, a MeadWestvaco company ]]> http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/05/10_things_to_ask_when_evaluati.html http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/05/10_things_to_ask_when_evaluati.html Tue, 15 May 2007 09:59:18 -0500 Bruce Greenwald has said this about innovative technologies: “In the long run, everything is a toaster.” Implying that eventually innovation has no effect on a product with many versions of the same product competing solely on price. In a recent MIT Sloan Management Review entitled "The Myth of Commoditization,” Michael Schrage, an MIT technology researcher does a nice job of arguing that commoditization does not have to be the future for any product, including toasters. He details the innovations in toasters from their emergence in 1905 to the present and lists the many innovations that continue to allow some toaster models to compete on everything except price. I saw a two-slicer the other day selling for $235. No commodity, that. The “self-fulfilling prophecy” occurs when a company decides that their product has, indeed, become a commodity, usually based on the emergence of a lower cost alternative. Not realizing that the condition may be temporary, the company begins to treat their own product as a commodity, which usually means a reduction in the investment for that particular product. This creates a cap on what is an “acceptable” level of innovation and, almost by definition, forces new and innovative ideas to be discarded (as too expensive under the cap) or missed entirely. This lack of innovation does a disservice to the company, its investors, its employees and most of all, its customers. Oddly enough, better prices AND innovation can both come from an improvement in, of all things, process. Innovation does not come from crisis. Shortcuts, yes. Innovation, rarely. Innovation has to be part of the overall process of providing the product to customers. It relies on having enough time in the process for innovative ideas to appear, be refined, tested and implemented. With the pressures we all have in the areas of speed to market, quality improvement and a reduction in rework, it is clear that our current processes do not contain this extra time. We must find ways to improve the process to gain the time to be able to innovate. More on where to find process improvements that foster innovation in an upcoming entry. Kent St. Vrain Vice President, Marketing and Business Development Paxonix, a MeadWestvaco company ]]> http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/05/commoditization_vs_innovation_a_self-fulfilling_prophecy.html http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/05/commoditization_vs_innovation_a_self-fulfilling_prophecy.html Tue, 08 May 2007 10:49:30 -0500 netiquette. Those that do will be deleted. Comments will be deleted if they meet the following definitions of flaming, trolling, or personal attacks: flaming - messages which are hostile or deliberately insulting trolling - making comments intended to induce an angry response or disrupt the flow of discussion personal attacks - derogatory, profane or offensive messages directed toward a specific individual. Who we are and what we will be blogging about: Paxonix, a division of MeadWestvaco, a $6 billion leader in the packaging industry, drives business success by accelerating branding and packaging processes across the entire enterprise, improving quality and reducing rework. Our solution, PaxPro, positively impacts the following aspects of your business and so those are the topics we will focus on in this blog: Reduction in time to market Improvement in quality outcomes in packaging, POP and collateral materials Greater time for innovation Visibility into status of product launches and other packaging or marketing projects Greater accountability Improved regulatory compliance processes (21 CFR Part 11, Sarbanes Oxley, Six Sigma) Susan Roberts Director, Marketing Paxonix, a MeadWestvaco company Blog on. Or contact me at blog@paxonix.com ]]> http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/04/welcome_to_the_new_paxonix_paxblog.html http://www.paxonix.com/weblog/2007/04/welcome_to_the_new_paxonix_paxblog.html Mon, 30 Apr 2007 13:14:02 -0500