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October 29, 2022June 30, 2023

Kaizen 改 (kai -change) 善 (zen- for the better)

Photo by Connor Ludy - Japanese signs on orange background — Photo by Conor Luddy

Kaizen is no new concept, it is quite an old concept well renowned in the industry, in relation to quality management.

Most sectors nowadays must adapt quickly to a changing environment, in a nearly organic manner. There is that resistance to change nearly inherent to human beings. Once we are used to something, and we are agile in a specific process, it takes a while for us to amold to a change that means learning a new technology, forgetting or unlearning the previous process.

Considering that a new adjustment or process would be beneficial, could it be that adding a new process would be what causes the initial friction?

How many of the changes you experienced in the last year meant learning to use a new tool or software?

There are possibly workers that can manage their jobs with 2 or 3 tools, buy I would dare to say that most of us use at least 5 or 6. Is that too much? Without too many details, I can count: Task and team manager + internal communication tool + online cloud storage + CRM + ERP + Invoicing system ; Shared document editor + Wiki + Password manager + Video conferencing system + Email + Time tracker + Process automation and workflow management…

So, just working with half of these tools is quite a lot to use on a daily basis, each team would have their own tools to manage and control their processes in the best way possible. Does it mean that we have enough and we cannot absorb any more tool-related changes? I do not have an answer to that but I do not think that is the best approach to the matter. It is, however, the time to reflect on how the process can be simplified, which is why I am taking on the automation of processes or integrations.

In that search for continuous improvement through change, it could be that we have become obsessed with wanting to use the best tool for everything – the most complete CRM, with a task manager and teams easy and usable; tools to communicate; intuitive invoicing system; and organized resources planning to link operations in different areas, ERP.

Do not get me wrong. Of course, we all want the best for our teams, and we want to provide the best in market tool for each process. But, sometimes, when we study processes from a top perspective, looking at the big picture, maybe the answer is in learning the connection between different tasks to create a sequence and automate as much as possible.

Is tool integration the new Kaizen of our time?

October 22, 2022February 3, 2023

Leaflet digitalization in the European Union?

Photo by Danielle Rice - map of europe — **Photo by Danielle Rice**

If you follow us, you would remember an earlier article about changes in the pharmaceutical industry in the last years, around tools and technology for document management.

Was it an exponential change in the industry ?

Some examples of these changes are:

A paper archive/database
Tracing in an spreadsheet
Control of changes on paper
Email or Fax as project manager
Visual Artwork review

These types of processes are now a thing of the past, and are being replaced by Artwork Management systems, and proofing tools that take change management to a totally new level.

The change has been enormous and more changes could be needed due to agreements between the European Medicines Agency (EMA) , management at Medicine agencies (HMA) and the European commission projects from 2018, aiming at a digital transformation in sanitary support in the European Union (see the draft here: EMA)

This transformation has implications that are beyond my knowledge, but some of the phases that it entails were:

March 2017 – report from the European Commission with an action plan for the EMA to identify areas susceptible of improvement to satisfy the needs of patients and professionals.
2018 – collaboration between EMA-HMA-EC identifying the needs for a future digitalization.
March 2017 – report from the European Commission with an action plan for the EMA to identify areas susceptible of improvement to satisfy the needs of patients and professionals.
28 november 2018 – EMA runs a workshop with patients/consumers, health professionals, interested parties in the industry, academics, NGOs and regulators. This returned the key principles of this process.
February to July 2019 – public consultation with over 500 comments.

After reviewing these comments in relation to the key principles defined, a pilot program emerged in January 2022, aimed at evaluating the impact of the removal of the paper leaflets in a small portion of medicines for human use, within hospitals.

These medicines should include in their primary packaging a non serialised Data Matrix code that, once captured, would allow direct access to the digital version of the leaflet from the information allocated in CIMA.

The pilot duration will be at least 2 years, and it will be implemented progressively.

Would there really be a digitalization in health assistance in the European Union? I believe that after all the effort, this will become a reality. The only question is to what extent is the EU capable of coordinating for the big change of digital times.

And you, are you ready?

October 4, 2022February 3, 2023

Remote work is here… to stay?

Photo by Nelly Antoniadou - image of small scrabble like letters in black wooden pieces, saying Work from home — *Photo by Nelly Antoniadou*

Unfortunately, change sometimes comes hand in hand with a crisis, of different types. The last change in the working environment had as a catalyst a sanitary crisis.

Even though it is of course true that not all jobs can be performed remotely, a great percentage of these only require a computer connected to the internet. Although it did not go without difficulties, imagine how this pandemic would have looked like for us 20 years ago!

Would have you been able to do your job from home 20 years ago?

If you go back in time … do you remember the amount of paper that was used at the time, that needed to be archived… a large room with the photocopiers, maybe even a fax… using telephone for everything, and access to an intranet with servers in the same building?

I have been working from home for a while and I feel confident that I have all the documentation I need and that the servers we use are on the cloud. If you work with Artworks and think there is some room for improvement for your process or moving to more modern technologies, I invite you to have a look at us.

There are many pros and cons about remote working depending on your activity and job environment . Working remotely you avoid unnecessary travel back and forth to your office, although it is true that sometimes that commute also helped “disconnect”. You remove distractions with chit chat and extra long breaks to talk to people. But the job is more isolated, and sometimes there are meetings where an email was enough (although that also happened in the “real” world).

In my view, there is still a process before the job environment adapts to this new paradigm, where there are many possibilities: mixed formats and phased approaches for new hires, etc.

Similarly, it is important that regulation comes to place for those remote / home workers based on what this means for their economies: support for extra expenses (utilities for instance). If you are working from home and are new to this topic, make a search around legislation that has been approved/promoted in this respect .

This article is not a fear monger about what would happen if we are forced again to all work/stay at home; on the contrary, the article is a praise to the fast adaptation of many companies in a difficult situation, demonstrating how agile they could be to make sure they could work as usual in a changing world, from one day to the next.

Do you think remote work has come to stay?

September 17, 2022January 24, 2023

How we manage our marketing projects

Photo by Twona
Image of Twona AMS system showing artwork uploaded and options for artwork details, project, preview and communication with messages — Photo by *Twona*

A few months ago, we were contacted by the marketing team of one of our Pharmaceutical clients to check if our solution could help them process their work, collaborate, and get approvals in a simpler manner than what they currently do. Our response was that yes, of course it can! You know why we know it? Because we use it ourselves!

In my role as Marketing manager, we use Twona to process our design deliverables. Like in many other companies with a small department, we used to handle everything through Slack/Google Chat or email, and store the files in drive. Since our type of work is very similar to what our clients are using for packaging designs, we also needed a better way to discuss things that are not lost in a myriad of chat messages, approvals of the work, and an organized archive of all the versions and easy tracking of the final approved one.

Using the system has proven a much better way to manage all this process.

Everyone in the team has access to it, and can find the latest version of a logo, a linkedin graphic or a brochure. Our project structure and naming convention help with this, even if the file itself would be called something generic, it is easy to find it with the search functionality.
We created a simple project workflow that fits our needs as a small team. Now, I get an overview of all the open projects, which ones are for review, or need attention, and can manage and rearrange the priorities better.
There are clear deadlines and assignment of responsibilities.
When the team is low on work, they can easily take older, less priority projects without these being forgotten, and without losing time.
Everyone involved gets notifications when something comes their way, so either to take a look at the information before a briefing meeting/discussion, or to go review the uploaded designs.
All communication related to a project and all files linked to it are in one place, so if we want to go back to something, it is always available.
Creating new design requests based on earlier files is much faster now, without having to re-attach all files to an email or include links. Also we can hide attachments that are no longer relevant, avoiding risk of using the wrong information.
We have no limitation on what to store so also high resolution and raw files can be included, in case someone else needs to work on those later.
We are able to send files safely for review through the tool to external parties such as partners or printers, always knowing that we are choosing the right files.
As we can leave annotations in the files, or attach other documents, the designers know what to change, and anyone (this is our choice) can access the feedback, so if a person is sick, someone else can take up the work without much of an issue as all the files are there, and all the notes/changes requested are also included in one place.
We can review that all changes requested have been made, or that the printer has not introduced anything strange when sending the final print proof, by using the native comparison tool.

Moreover, the team is happy with using Twona AMS for our own marketing projects, and it was a quick and simple transition for us.

We have made small adjustments as we progressed and introduced different types of projects, to be able to put projects on hold, or make material available for our partners, amongst others.

If you are considering a more organized way to manage your communication and collaboration around marketing projects, check out Twona and see if it can be of help for your team too!

September 14, 2022February 3, 2023

Standardizing products in the pharmaceutical industry

Homogeneize/Standardize is the process to harmonize or confer homogeneity or unity to the elements of a set or an area. When it comes to our packaging, it has many other implications:

Identification & communication of attributes and visibility.
Item Distribution Strategy.
Increase in perceived value of the product.
Brand recognition.
Loyalty.

With the term defined and considering the high strategic importance of standardizing our packaging, we are going to focus on how to deal with the production of (standardize) materials.

What is the best way to guarantee that our team of designers produce homogeneous materials?

Without a doubt, it is the use of templates. These templates, which are expected to be a shared resource, must be unique and protected to avoid changes and therefore generate unwanted deviations.

It is important to develop as many templates as types of products are in our portfolio. These types or groups of products have similar content, form and distribution:

Blister box
Vertical box
Label
Leaflet
Blister

Using a Folding Box as an example, our template must contain: logos and corporate identity signs, road safety or photosensitivity icon, recycling symbol(s), dosage chart and a long etcetera depending on the complexity of our design.

In order to complete our template, we are currently still missing a fundamental element. It is of vital importance to have a mockup in our template so that designers can use the elements that compose it when building new products.

Back to our example of a Folding Box. In our mock-up there will be a set of elements in the front face such as the name of the product/component in the correct corporate font, size and formatting that would help the designer create the final material. Very important is to make sure that these elements are not to be specific and refer to a real product/component. These should contain a generic text, such to avoid human errors by not replacing the correct text from the Medicines Agency.

For example: Molecule Brand 00 xx xxxxxxx xxxxxx EFG – all these in the correct font and sizes/styling.

Besides reducing risk of mistakes, another benefit of using templates is to exponentially speed up the design process. The template is expected to already solve many questions when starting producing a material: What font should I use? Where are the logos and icons? What were these products like that I haven’t worked on lately?…

To finish with our recommendations to standardize your designs with the use of templates, it is important to highlight that a template is subject to real and common cases. What does this mean? The template should be simplified as much as possible so that its use is agile and efficient, therefore, they should not include exceptions or extreme cases when creating the template.

Our template must encompass the common elements of at least 90% of our materials, as well as our guide or procedure for a material that you can see in a previous article: Facing a Rebranding without stress.

September 3, 2022January 24, 2023

Stress-Free Packaging Rebranding

Photo by myriam-zilles-KltoLK6Mk

As difficult as it may be to recognize it, we sometimes have a hard time adjusting to change. It is that adaptation process what seems like an uphill task.

For a pharmaceutical lab to be competitive, it needs to keep adjusting their processes; using new tools that make work more efficient, or renewing their brand image, for example. And that is the aspect we are going to focus on.

Rebranding and its feared companion: the new Guideline

A rebranding is a brand image change that affects a company’s products and packaging and which rules are collected in a document, named a guideline. Some of the changes that these entail are:

New corporate design.
New color ranges.
Fonts.
Icons, logos.

Finding the necessary information to adjust your designs in a document of 30, 60 or maybe even 150 pages, can be complex. Do you imagine working each day with such a lengthy document?

If you have never gone through a rebranding process, here is a shocker: no guideline, none at all, ever, has covered all possible cases. I mean exceptions, nearly impossible implementations, small formats like a label or adjusting those rules to a double molecule, with hidroclorotiazide, for instance.

How to handle a rebranding in an efficient manner?

When you first get introduced to a new guideline, a mix of feelings arise: it is both exciting and challenging at the same time. Before you start hyperventilating at the thought of how complicated it can become to check that or another details, make sure you do this: simplify the document into smaller sections, so you can solve each case separately, focusing on what is important.

The key is to divide the information in several areas, one way is for instance by type of product:

Folding Box
Leaflet
Labels

Whatever division you choose from, it should answer one question: “How do I design/ review a …” > For example, for a Folding box, as it is a very common product that has a rather high complexity.

The procedure to design a box from the guideline is then dissected into smaller pieces that compose it: front face/back face/secondary faces/closing sleeve…

Each section of the divided guidelines will obviously have to contain all its specific rules, and always have images/drawings of real examples. Make sure to also define margins, corporate elements, proportions, and colors, besides the actual content of that box face.

My recommendation is to leave exceptions or special cases to the end. Make sure that the section covers 90% of the cases and leave the 10% for the end of the section.

Similarly, from my experience, besides splitting up information into more agile documents, I would recommend creating templates for the most common cases. It is also very useful to generate checklists that contain the key elements that cannot be missed. Both of these will help you tremendously on the final review.

And you? What tricks do you use to make your rebranding projects simpler and less stressful?

If you are currently going through a rebranding process or it is in the planning, and you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me. Good luck with that rebranding process!

Rafael Cruz Núñez
Artwork Manager

August 30, 2022February 3, 2023

Improve your quality (of your work and your Artworks)

Photo by Twona
Depicts a the design of a wrapper of a chocolate tablet, turned 90 degrees clockwise, with red markings when there are changes from two versions of the artwork. — *Photo by Twona*

One of the areas where we have achieved more speed, and a reduction in the number of errors, is the quality area.

Does this sound familiar?

Three people are reviewing the content of a new leaflet.
One of them reads the text from the Medicines Agency mentioning the format (e.g bold, italics, indent…).
The two others visually review a printed Artwork.
The whole process takes at least 45 minutes.

Imagine the amount of deviations that a isual check can have, without mentioning the waste of personnel time!

This (real) experience happened a while ago, and nowadays, there are tools in the market that help with this review. Do you think the one you use is quick and efficient enough?

Here is where technology makes our life much easier, as we have comparison tools at all levels, the graphical and the content side, to check Artworks. We always use them internally, before our clients do their own checks, both by the designer who is producing the Artwork and by a colleague in the QA team. This is what we call the 4-eye principle.

Twona X-RAY

Our experience? With the content comparison we are able to review a new text in 5 minutes. Similarly, reviewing changes that we received on an Artwork graphically becomes a much simpler task.

Twona X-RAY’s graphical comparison can visually recognize documents, automatically adjust them to overlap and make the revision process much more efficient Some critical examples for us have been comparing an Artwork with a press-proof that has a different orientation, in which some technical details, such as a Laetus code, has been inserted.

I would like to invite you to try our comparison tool, and calculate how much time and resources you could be saving on your daily Artwork control and review process.

If you still have paper piling up on your desk , going to the office is mandatory to be able to do your work or have the feeling that there are things that can be improved, do not hesitate to share with us your needs, and we can help you make that leap to succeed in a changing and more demanding future.

August 24, 2022February 3, 2023

3 simple automations to make your process easier

Photo by Twona
Image depicts a tree-shaped process, showing how when a project is created in Twona AMS, certain actions can be automated like snd a slack message, add a google calendar event or update some KPIs in google Studio. — *Photo by Twona*

Having an effective process is a major goal of most organizations. We know to reach that goal, you use other systems that support or extend your design management processes. And that is fine! Twona AMS ticks many boxes towards achieving effectiveness, and if you implement some of these tips you may be able to reach that goal even faster.

Transferring data within the system or across systems without having to manually do so – sounds good, does it not?

1. Automatic version status update when project stages changes

Imagine that your team has reviewed a document version and has added comments to it. This actually means that the version reviewed is rejected, and a new one will need to be created. You can decide to manually mark it as such before you move the project to the team responsible for the needed changes, or better yet you can build a rule in Twona AMS that will do this for you.

Here is an example of a similar rule.

You may need to adjust this to your internal naming, and you may have a specific use case for a different action. If you need some help to build this, just make sure to contact us!

2. Create a Trello/Monday/Asana card/task when a project reaches a specific milestone

Does your company use some of these popular project management systems ? Then it may be clever to automate the creation of a card when a design is completed and ready to launch so that marketing can start creating their campaigns, or so that the design team can receive the feedback on the design and create a new version (if we want to follow the previous example).

Using the power of Zapier, we are able to integrate Twona AMS with these tools and connect two worlds with just a few clicks.

You can use the predefined workflow for Trello (or other tool you use), or create your own.

3. Notify users when a project reaches a specific status

Some users may need to be alerted when a project is ready for them to take action, such as creating a design based on the briefing, reviewing and approving, or collecting extra information.

If the user does not keep Twona AMS open at all times, you may want to create a notification to inform them that there is an action for them to complete. Notify your users where THEY are most likely to see it. You can choose to do it to a Slack channel, a Google Chat (Room) and/or a good old email.

These are just a few ideas of how you can automate your process and become more efficient. If you have any other ideas, or suggestions, make sure to share those with me!

August 10, 2022February 3, 2023

My experience in managing Packaging Artworks

Photo by Felipe Furtado - table with postit notes and markers. Experience briefing and process steps — *Photo by Felipe Furtado*

I have been working over 15 years in the packaging industry, particularly all related to Regulatory affairs.

In all this time, despite the regulatory changes that have influenced formats, texts, graphics … variations, the day to day process of Artwork creation for packaging materials has remained quite stable.

What has changed, and exponentially, are the tools that help us manage the creation and review of Artworks, both on the process side, and on the quality side.

If you have been around in this industry for a while, you probably remember a lot more paper. Paper to start an Artwork, paper to manage the changes, paper to check that the reviews were made, and paper to add it to the archive.

How much paper do you have right now on your table?

You probably have things stored on the intranet, or maybe even on the cloud. This means that it does not matter where you are, or where you are, you are able to check or execute any work you need remotely. Think about how some companies have suffered when they were not able to function normally without being physically in the office.

Nowadays, most seem to have this storing function under control. But this is just a part. In order to have a final document to store (wherever it is) , you need a process of information collection, design creation, review, approvals, checks and changes and version control, until you end up with the final material.

How do YOU manage all this process?

Many handle it via email, mixing external tools to share large files because their email capacity is limited. Possibly, you also use a spreadsheet to track open processes, but without any traceability or automatic control of “where” each Artwork is at each moment.

That was me also around 2005.

And this is how Twona AMS was born, our Artwork Management System. It was developed around the same needs that your team may have. We did not want to “suffer” more, and we knew there were better ways to manage all those processes within a single tool.

One of the biggest advantages of using Twona, to my own view, has always been the increase in visibility. Visibility of all the projects we were handling; but also, of all the information related to a new design/change, all in one single place.

Thanks to this, we are able to manage priorities with agility, distribute work in a more balanced manner, and we avoid generating bottle necks when a colleague is out of the office. This has all resulted in faster turnaround of Artworks.

Additionally, we can send a request for review directly from the tool, internally and externally, and see all comments, messages or additional documents all in one single screen. This helps tremendously with the editing process and with reducing the number of iterations needed before we can consider an Artwork as ready for print.

We, as well as our clients, also use some quality tools to review Artworks – these are embedded in Twona and accessible with just a click. But I will talk more about this in another moment, not to take much of your time.

If my post has triggered your curiosity and want to know how an Artwork Management System in the cloud works, or think that there may be some processes susceptible of improvement within your team, access this link to get more info or ask for a demo.

July 22, 2022January 24, 2023

Add (this) AMS to your life

Are you involved in Artwork Packaging Design?

If you’re reading this you and your team probably manage thousands of artworks a year: from packaging, to labels, to digital assets, you name it. Between emails, phone calls, reminders, artworks with change requests, new design specifications, and last minute jobs, there’s no doubt you have a busy work day.

If all the above makes you feel stressed it could be because you have not found the right system to help you with all of your workload … YET.

With that in mind I would like you to take a look at Twona AMS, a highly customizable Artwork Management System which is simple and easy to use, and can be integrated with other tools to automate your workflow, all without you having to be a coding expert.

With Twona AMS you will find a one stop shop for your design process, from beginning to end. So what can you expect from Twona AMS?

Twona AMS can provide you with…

Tailored workflows
A complete overview of you and your team’s workload
The ability to allocate time and resources accordingly
A way to oversee the complete process of a project from one single location
A tool to collaborate with your team, add messages, and leave notes
Quality assurance tools, such as graphic and content comparison directly from your job request
A way to share documents and get artwork approvals internally or from external parties
The ability to keep version control and history of all your files
Automation of tasks that can be repetitive
Integration with other applications already used in your organization to avoid duplication of activities

If this sounds lovely, you don’t need to wait any longer to regain control of your workflow and increase your efficiency.

Checking our website is free, and getting yourself a license is too!

You can start today with no obligation.