Evolution of global markets packaging requirements for major domestic appliances: the Electrolux case

Packaging it’s an essential part of every manufacturing company. It accomplishes many functions: it protects, allows transportation, informs, contains, and promotes. Packaging can also be defined as a complex system of preparing products for stocking, logistics, transport, sale, and end use, which impacts the organizations at many levels and requires proper attention in every stage of its lifecycle. This complexity can reveal difficult to manage for many reasons, especially in big companies that operate worldwide as in the case of Electrolux. Electrolux is a global appliances company with a large variety of products, including major domestic appliances, on which this thesis is focused. The thesis project originates from the critical situation in which Electrolux find itself in managing continuously evolving global packaging requirements, which is a direct consequence of an increasing sustainability awareness of countries, consumers, and companies. The thesis focuses on improving and updating research and development procedures related to packaging to manage and better react to the evolving context of the recent years. This is achieved by actively contributing on the most important aspects and at the urgencies that emerged from the analysis. To fully understand the thesis background, in the first chapter an analysis of packaging focused on what its development requires and how it should be supported is presented. The definition of the context of evolving packaging requirements follows, with examples of countries interested and how manufacturers are trying to react to it. Before analysing the specific case of Electrolux, in chapter two a brief introduction of the company and where the thesis project take place is reported. The Electrolux case analysis starts by tracking the problematic aspects and the inefficiencies currently present in the company organization during the activities related to the evolving context of packaging requirements. After this identification process, the thesis project is presented by explaining the direction that Electrolux should move towards for improving the current critical situation. The following chapters present in detail the approach and the work accomplished by the thesis and the internship associated to it. In chapter three, packaging sustainability parameters requirements management and analysis are reported and how critical it is to rely on the product data available for being compliance. The analysis extends also to the products components for providing additional details and increasing its business value. The review and improving process undertaken to better manage these requirements follows, highlighting which important results the thesis project achieved and what should be the definitive solution. At the end of the chapter, some of the results of the work accomplished to satisfy these requirements are reported. From chapter four, the attentions that developing a more sustainable packaging requires are presented, since it’s one of the company’s priorities for reducing its environmental impact and it represents a step beyond simply meeting requirements. Starting with the design aspects, this thesis presents an example that proves how the documentation and procedures related to them need to be updated, explaining the approach that should be adopted for this purpose. In chapter five, the analysis continues by focusing on the challenging aspects of packaging testing that a global company faces, following the same approach of the previous chapter. The final chapter summarizes the main consideration and accomplishment of the thesis, highlighting limitations and possible future improvements.