Five important processes your contract packager can handle for your management team at no cost

In our last blog, we talked about using lean execution to reduce various types of process waste. The newest addition to Lean’s “eight types of waste” is underutilization of talent and resources. In this blog, we explore how a contract packaging partner can take on specific processes at no additional charge so that your management team can focus on more pressing and profitable priorities.

Contract packagers are cost-effective and value-add

Advances in technology have streamlined some manufacturing processes, while creating complexity in others. To mitigate these complexities and keep focused, more and more General Managers are looking to the experience of their contract packaging partners to support them with cost-neutral solutions. Using a full-service contract packaging partner who offers production, fulfillment and packaging gives you more than just an opportunity to “outsource” (or insource) traditional in-house operations.  This type of partnership can free-up your management team to focus on higher-order work. Here are five important processes your contract packager could easily and cost-effectively handle for your management team today:

• Building kits for downstream manufacturing processes is a laborious and time-consuming operation, and kitting is often critical to efficient manufacturing.

Using an experienced contract packager for your kitting operation helps you reduce in-house labor hours. By delegating kitting to a contract packager, you can reduce your reliance on overtime and, at no extra cost, you can realize the added benefits of fixed-costs and flexible scheduling.

• Packaging. Short production runs are often a drain on in-house resources. Pushing out such runs to an experienced contract packager will not only relieve you of the stress and hassle of planning and scheduling these challenging production cycles; but at no extra cost to you, you get added in-house machine capacity to manage higher-margin production orders.

• When schedules are tight, manufacturers may be tempted to work additional shifts or hire temporary assembly line workers. Instead of incurring this added labor expense, turning to an experienced contract packager for support might be a better idea. First, it will cost you nothing in terms of staffing-up to meet a tough deadline. Second, with the contract assembly work taken over by a service provider, your in-house plant is saved from being run to over-capacity – something that usually ends up costing manufacturers in the long-run.

• Specialized packaging plays a large role in brand reputation management. An experienced contract packager lets you use more packaging options or go with higher-touch packaging for that perfect ‘unboxing’ customer experience. Additionally, you will incur no cost at all for managing the entire process, because your contract packaging partner’s project management team will provide that oversight.

• Redundancy. A final value-add advantage of using contractors is that you don’t need to build redundancy into your hand production line – something that usually costs manufacturers a lot of money. An experienced contract packager will often have multiple distribution and fulfillment centers. At no additional cost, you have a ready-made redundant manufacturing plan by leveraging the contract packagers who support you.

By tapping into the experience and flexibility offered by a contract packaging partner, you and your management team can save a lot of time and money, and realize many value-added benefits without incurring additional cost. Best of all, your management team stays focused on priorities and initiatives that move the business forward, and contribute more to your bottom line.