Used the world over to protect, move, and store a multitude of products, packaging comes in a multitude of materials – corrugated containerboard, boxboard, folding paperboard, aluminum foil, foamed plastics, bubble wrap, and, even, glass. And although common packaging bears the distinction as one of the world's most-used commodity products, packaging products are hardly common. Each is unique in material, size, construction, color, and labeling.

However, as every packaging and container producer knows, a truly common thread in commodity-driven businesses is the pressure to drive profit margins by increasing sales effectiveness and distribution, while managing costs from procurement through production. SAP can help. The SAP for Mill Products solution enables packaging and container companies to more effectively control costs, provide more competitive sales quotes, and increase efficiencies in the way that products are made and moved.

SAP provides business management solutions that help packaging companies optimize production and supply chains. Not only can SAP help your business overcome impediments that often stall optimization efforts – a complex, heterogeneous IT landscape built from a collection of legacy mill and manufacturing processes combined with homegrown and custom applications – but it offers solutions that target your industry's specific processes.

In particular, SAP solutions for packaging:

• Support powerful master data modeling functions for uniquely describing the desired product and its production method
• Manage product configuration and simplify key processes from sales quotations through procurement and manufacturing
• Run on the SAP NetWeaver platform, enabling your business to integrate packaging-specific manufacturing execution systems (MES) to ensure the execution of all packaging business processes

Learn more about SAP solutions for packaging and container companies by looking at the SAP for Mill Products Business Maps.