The hidden cost of a late design change

Late in a project, someone asks for a small change. The product grows by two millimetres, a new accessory goes in the box, or the logo moves. On paper it is a minor revision. In packaging, it rarely is.

In this article we look at why late changes cost more than they appear to, what research on engineering change tells us about where that cost hides, and what helps packaging teams keep it under control.

1. A small change is never alone

How it shows up. The product changes by two millimetres. The insert no longer fits, so it is redesigned. The carton grows, so the case count per layer drops, the pallet pattern changes and fewer units fit in a container. The dieline changes, so the artwork is resized and new printing plates are made. The transit test results no longer apply to the new pack, so testing is repeated. Each step is reasonable. Together they can add weeks.

What the research says. Researchers call this change propagation: a change in one part of a design can require knock-on changes elsewhere so that the whole design still works together. A 2023 review in Research in Engineering Design notes that such propagation can be difficult to predict, especially when a design has many parts and tightly integrated design issues.^[1] A packaged product is exactly that kind of system: product, packaging, line, pallet, transport and label all depend on each other. A widely cited review by Jarratt and colleagues describes engineering change as both an important issue for industry and an active area of research.^[2]

2. The cost you see

How it shows up. The visible cost of a late packaging change is easy to list: modified or new tooling, new printing plates, scrapped printed stock, extra samples and repeated tests. These costs appear on a quote, so they get attention.

What the research says. A case study of engineering change orders in automotive development by Terwiesch and Loch found that engineering change orders are part of almost every development process, consume a significant part of engineering capacity and contribute heavily to development and tool costs.^[3] Engineering capacity is the part that rarely appears on a quote: the same people who should be finishing the next milestone are re-doing the last one.

3. The cost you don't see: waiting

How it shows up. The change itself takes a few days of work. Getting it approved, quoted, scheduled with the supplier and signed off takes much longer. Meanwhile the launch date does not move.

What the research says. In the same automotive case, the administrative process for an engineering change could take several weeks, several months and, in extreme cases, more than a year.^[3] The researchers identified five contributors to these long lead times: a complex approval process, snowballing changes, scarce capacity and congestion, setups and batching, and organisational issues.^[3] A companion paper noted that the actual processing time for a change typically did not exceed two weeks, and identified congestion, caused by scarce capacity combined with variable workloads, as a major contributor to the gap.^[4] In their words, a change order spent most of its life sitting on someone's desk.^[5]

For packaging, this matters because packaging changes usually sit at the end of the chain. When the product change finally clears approval, the packaging change starts, and the supplier's tooling and print schedule start after that.

4. Scope creep is the normal case, not the exception

How it shows up. Each change request feels like a one-off. Looking back over a project, they rarely are.

What the research says. PMI's 2018 Pulse of the Profession found that 52% of projects completed in the previous 12 months experienced scope creep or uncontrolled changes to scope, up from 43% five years earlier.^[6] If roughly half of projects experience it, a packaging plan that assumes no late changes is planning for the less likely outcome.

5. What helps: front-load, then make change cheaper

Front-load the problems. Thomke and Fujimoto define front-loading as shifting the identification and solving of problems to earlier phases of development, and argue that it reduces development time and cost.^[7] Their examples include the use of digital mock-ups to find interference problems that are very costly to solve if they are found later, and a field study of how Toyota shifted problem-solving to earlier stages of development.^[8] For packaging, front-loading means bringing packaging into product design reviews, checking fit, pallet pattern and line handling on early models, and agreeing a packaging freeze date that is linked to the product freeze.

Accept that some change will come. An exploratory study of changes in German industry by Fricke and colleagues found that prevention and front-loading were the preferred strategies, but concluded that changes are necessary to stay competitive, and proposed making late changes cost-efficient by designing changeability into the system.^[9] In packaging, changeability can mean outer cartons from a standard size range, inserts that can be adjusted without new tooling, and artwork layouts with room for text changes.

Shorten the waiting. Loch and Terwiesch proposed five ways to reduce change lead time: flexible capacity, balanced workloads, merged tasks, pooling, and reduced setups and batching.^[4] For a packaging team, the practical version is a clear owner for each change, a fixed weekly slot to review and approve change requests, and one combined impact assessment instead of a chain of separate approvals.

A packaging impact checklist for every change request

Before a product change is approved, ask packaging to answer these questions in writing:

• Do the insert, primary pack and shipper still fit?
• Does the pallet pattern or container fill change?
• Do dielines, artwork or printing plates change?
• Which tests must be repeated, and when is the lab available?
• Which tooling must be modified, and what is the supplier's lead time?
• How much printed or formed stock becomes obsolete?
• What is the new earliest date for packaging release?

The last answer is the one that matters most. A change that looks cheap can still be the change that moves the launch.

Late design changes are one of the risks in our free Packaging Project Risk Register, along with a trigger and a ready-made response. For more risks that sit between departments, see 5 packaging risks nobody logs.