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Articles Articles > System Approach to Trend Analysis in Package Development Everybody knows that package is the product’s outfit making the first impression. This is why every manufacturer wants to dress the product up so that it looks elegant, stylish, beautiful, convenient, and practical; the goal is to catch eye of as many consumers as possible. In self-service stores choice decision is mainly ruled by what consumer can see on the shelf. Provided there are products of equal quality, preference will be given to the product which not only attracts more attention, offers more convenient consumption, provides more information about itself, but also is more efficient in social function fulfillment. In the situation of increasingly extending product ranges, growing consumption and accelerating competition, package development becomes a merge of technologies, design, advertising and culture. No wonder that innovative package solutions are the task not only of food and drinks manufacturers and package industry, but also of science labs developing new – first of all environmentally safe and organic – package materials, and also of independent designers and artists. Unfortunately, this R&D activity is excursive, very often interesting solutions and concepts are not used by the company which invented them. Next steps are taken by other companies all over the world – and again in an excursive and unpredictable way. System approach can increase manageability of this process allowing purposeful search for solution of the set tasks and forecastable and efficiency-improving system development. Final result will be significant improvement of time-efficiency in comparison to traditional R&D ways, and increased competitive advantages. ANTECEDENT Advertising of alcohol drinks is seriously restricted for obvious reasons. This makes package practically the only way of attracting consumers. Thus players of alcohol market should be very choosy about package design. According to GOST 17527-2003, package is the means or a set of means providing product protection against damage and loss, preventing environment pollution, and ensuring product turnover*. Thus, package escorts the product practically on a lifetime basis.Package consists of a container – major element for holding product, and accessorial packing elements.Thus package can be presented as a system** meant to fulfill the set tasks or functions***. Any developing system aims at improvement or increase of perfection. To define the ways of improvement – i.e. efficiency increase – one should articulate functions peculiar to the review system which includes the following elements:
In our case package is a system with the following two types of function:
To understand package functions better, let’s look at consumer liquid food package with an accent on alcohol drinks.Any system proves itself only in interrelation, i.e. in function when it realizes its purpose of existence. In other words, function is the model of systems’ interrelation – both of its elements inside it and of system as a whole with external objects. Let’s take the most general case to exemplify the approach. The model will be simplified, i.e. some elements of internal and external relations will be eliminated for simplicity.The system to improve or change will be package consisting of a container – bottle, can, etc., a cap and a label. These three elements together constitute the system named “Package”.When choosing a product in the store and when consuming the product later on, consumer is interrelating with the product and its package which can be described by several functions.During the initial contact a person is the object to all constituents of package info-action: package with a beverage informs the consumer about the beverage. Building models like this requires considering all major aspects of the review functions. When all the systems’ elements and functions are defined, and the points of change are agreed, improvement method should be chosen. IMPROVEMENT METHODS In the general case improvement methods can be the following:1. improvement of fulfillment of actual (positive) functions;2. amendments;3. introduction of new functions – extension of functionality.Successful application of the said methods implies usage of several special tools and one of them is analysis of development mechanisms**** of functional systems*****. This analysis allows estimation of the systems’ growth potential in a certain function and under certain way of action; besides, forms of new improved systems can be found.To articulate all possible functions of package all of its life cycle stages****** should be reviewed. PACKAGE LIFE CYCLE STAGES Methods mentioned above intersect. For instance, improvement of informative function can lead both to introduction of new functions and some amendments to the system. Thus it is advisable further on to stick to more clear classification which would include package life cycle stages. Let’s take a part of package life cycle, exactly consumer usage and adjacent stages of sales and utilization. This period can be split into the following parts:
Below we present some development trends of the system “Package” on the review intercept of its life cycle. Product turnover here implies transfer, storage and sales. ** System – complex of interrelated elements generating new properties. *** Functions are determined by designation of systems’ elements. **** Development mechanism – complex of statistically reproducing trends of changes that system’s properties suffer during their evolution. ***** That is systems designed for certain functions. ****** Life cycle – period from birth/creation to disappearance/utilization of a certain system. 
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