Packaging methods in many Polish enterprises have remained stagnant since the interwar period. At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, packaging, materials, and packaging aesthetics changed, but the packaging process itself remained at a manual level in many companies.
It can be assumed that the development of production processes in Poland was focused on the modernization of the manufacturing process itself. The largest financial resources were directed towards modern automated machines and equipment used directly for manufacturing. Increasing production has caused packaging operations, which are necessary to bring products to market, to become a “bottleneck” in many enterprises—a resource element that is 100% consumed in the process to achieve maximum output. The result of this has been excessive employment in packaging positions. These low-paid positions, due to their low specialization, cause high financial expenditures on manual packaging due to their sheer number. In the long term, many enterprises should allocate funds to maximize the automation of their product packaging operations. Investments and innovation in the field of packaging are necessary and require continuous monitoring of dominant trends in the packaging sphere.
Production system and subsystem
A production process is an ordered sequence of actions resulting in the user receiving products (goods) or services. The basic characteristics of a production system are: purposefulness, dynamics, and economic efficiency, which means that:
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the production process, as an ordered set of actions and activities, must be designed and organized with the intention of achieving a specific goal or group of goals (goals can be variable),
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the production process, although designed according to specific operating rules, exhibits variable quantitative, qualitative, material, energy, and information characteristics, which testifies to the dynamics of its functioning,
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the production process should be consistent with the principles of economics, that is, in accordance with the principle of maximizing production effect under specific conditions, it should minimize the consumption of production factors,
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in accordance with the principle of dynamics, a necessary condition for the production process is the flow of people, materials, information, and energy factors.
One of the most important metrics for evaluating the efficiency of production processes is the productivity index, which is expressed as the ratio of inputs incurred in the production process to the outputs of that process (manufactured products). The characteristics of the production process, its elements, and the relationships between them are shown in Figure 1.
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Source: Logistyka Magazine 6/2012