Packaging and Labeling: Organization and Governance

By Stephen McIndoe BEng CEng MIET, VP Consulting, Be4ward

My previous article discussed the core artwork process and the other company processes it may interface with or be supported by.  In this article, I will look at how roles are structured to support the process and the governance that needs to be put in place to lead the process.

Roles That Support The Process

Roles should be structured to support the business process. Therefore, you need to have defined your business process before your roles and ultimately people’s jobs.

An individual role should be constructed by examining the tasks a process needs to have performed and the skills and knowledge that those tasks require to perform them successfully. Once all this is understood, a logical grouping can be performed to gather together tasks that require similar skills and knowledge.

Some of the typical roles that result from this include:

• Artwork Coordinator
• Artwork Operator
• Proof Reader
• Local Market Representative
• Regulatory Affairs Representative
• Printer Representative
• Supply Chain Representative
• Packaging Technologist
• Packaging Quality Control
• ERP Data Management Representative
• Packaging Operation Representative
• Legal Representative

In a typical organisation, there are a number of artwork capability related roles that tend to equate to full-time roles for individuals, or at least absorb a very significant portion of an individual’s time. This is a point that will become useful when we discuss organisation design later in this article. These “full-time” roles are typically:

• Artwork co-ordinator
• Artwork operator
• Proofreader