Dental Products Company Achieves 22% Savings on Packaging Spend

Overview

A provider of health care products and services for dental and medical practitioners, with a product portfolio consisting of preventatives, infection-control products, composites, anesthetics, dental implants, generic and branded drugs, vaccines, surgical products and diagnostic tests, among others. The company operates in both North American and Europe, and serves dental practitioners, laboratories and physician practices, government, institutional healthcare clinics and other alternate care clinics.

Challenges

A high number of acquisitions across a six year period resulted created a number of procurement-related challenges for the company with respect to its packaging spend, including supplier fragmentation across a number of geographies and low spend visibility.

Approach

PA’s packaging team first began with the goal of reducing the overall supplier base from five different suppliers to one through it’s GPO program, reducing complexity and providing the member the ability to make business wide changes. 

Through the programs Value Add / Value Engineering (VA/VE) services, PA’s packaging engineers then reviewed the full pack-out and materials of the highest volume product line and provided solutions for material optimization, packaging redesign and void fill optimization. PA also conducted live testing and provided standard operating procedures and work instruction for the pack-out.

Results

The GPO program and the VA/VE services resulted in a combined $211,000 in savings on $959,000 in packaging spend. The member also benefits from PA’s additional members services, where they receive monthly savings reports, issue resolution and proactive quoting for new materials / projects in ongoing cost avoidance initiatives.