"We had to move OEE out of the high‑60s and shave changeovers by at least a third—without adding a single square meter," says Marc, the plant production manager in Lyon. "Our accessory lines were multiplying SKUs, and our line just couldn’t keep pace." We brought in pakfactory after a blunt review of our numbers and a few late‑night Gemba walks.
Here’s where it gets interesting: the constraints were real—legacy flexo for long runs, a small digital press for short bursts, and finishing assets that weren’t aligned to frequent changeovers. No silver bullet. We had to stitch a pathway out of this using the assets we already owned.
Fast forward six months, and the line felt different: a steadier pace, fewer reworks, and color that stayed put across substrates. It wasn’t perfect—foil SKUs still tugged at setup time—but the floor stopped firefighting and started planning again.
Company Overview and History
We’re a mid-sized electronics accessories brand serving retail across Europe, with the main packaging hub in Lyon, France. The portfolio spans cables, chargers, and small smart-home devices—lots of small carton sizes, many seasonal, and frequent artwork updates. Our packaging mix is roughly 85% folding cartons with paper labels and 15% flexible pouches for bundles.
Market planning pushed us toward more SKU granularity. Our demand team kept referencing “france electronic goods packaging market size by product size” to justify micro-SKU launches for narrow retail niches. Good for sales, tough on operations. Runs got shorter, changeovers got louder, and our color expectations didn’t budge.
Due diligence mattered. We scanned pakfactory reviews to gauge how other brands handled complex dielines and multi-finish cartons. Procurement even asked if there was a pakfactory coupon code for early sample kits—a small thing, but it lowered the friction for our pilot batches and kept finance calm while we tested new specs.
Capacity and Throughput Limitations
Baselines told the story: OEE hovered around 65–68% on mixed SKUs. Changeovers averaged 85–95 minutes when we touched plates, coatings, and die‑cut tools in one go. First Pass Yield sat in the 86–88% range, with rework tied to color drift and cracking on heavier board. Waste hovered near 8–10%, which might be tolerable on long runs but stings on short ones.
Color was its own headwind. ΔE drift ran 4–5 across substrates when we bounced between Digital Printing and Flexographic Printing on the same day. Finishing hit us too—Soft‑Touch Coating behaved differently on CCNB versus SBS board, and Spot UV didn’t forgive registration slip. None of this was fatal on its own; together, it chipped away at time and confidence.
Solution Design and Configuration
The turning point came when we stopped hunting for a single machine fix and designed a hybrid path. We anchored base layers and long SKUs on Flexographic Printing, then routed seasonal and multi-language variants to Digital Printing. We also re-sequenced finishing: die‑cut and Window Patching in one cell, Foil Stamping and Soft‑Touch in another, so we weren’t starving one bottleneck. Based on insights from pakfactory’s work with 50+ packaging brands, we added simple but strict queues—no mixed-ink jobs back‑to‑back, and a hard cap on plate changes inside a two‑hour window.
Materials and color came next. We standardized on a product packaging paper grade in the 350–400 gsm range for premium folding cartons (FSC certified), moving away from brittle CCNB for SKUs prone to edge cracking. Water‑based Ink for board, UV‑LED Ink for labels, and a G7 curve tied to ISO 12647. That tightened ΔE to 1.5–2.5 on most jobs. We also documented dieline rules and trained design: our studio literally used a checklist titled “how to make product packaging design in illustrator” so bleeds, crease allowances, and varnish knockouts arrived right the first time.
The brand partnered with pakfactory to redesign the packaging line layout and prepress handoffs. We didn’t replace every asset; we reordered them. We moved slitting and Lamination closer to the digital cell, introduced a small Variable Data station for promo labels, and trimmed plate libraries by consolidating legacy SKUs. Not everything was smooth—foil SKUs still asked for longer setup, and Soft‑Touch needed careful curing time—but the line quit stalling over minor format shifts.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Six months post-implementation, the numbers settled into a healthier band:
• OEE moved to ~80–83% on mixed SKU days, up from ~65–68%.
• Changeover time fell from ~90 minutes to 50–60 minutes on typical carton jobs (30–40% faster).
• FPY rose into the 92–95% range, with rework tied mainly to specialty foils.
• ΔE tightened from 4–5 to roughly 1.5–2.5 on certified substrates.
• Waste dropped from 8–10% to about 4–5% on short‑run cartons.
• Throughput increased by roughly 20–25% measured in finished packs per shift.
• Energy per pack decreased by about 8–12% thanks to fewer restarts and steadier speeds.
• Payback Period is tracking 14–18 months, depending on seasonal volumes.
But there’s a catch. Specialty finishes still pull setup time out of the average, and not every SKU qualifies for Digital Printing without cost trade‑offs. Also, our preferred board spec needs firm supply commitments; when lead times stretch, we flex to an alternate that runs slightly slower. Even so, the line’s rhythm is better, and the team spends more time producing than resetting. For us, that’s the real win—and it started with a hard look at the numbers and a pragmatic partnership with pakfactory.
