Flexible Plastic Packaging Manufacturing

How a Flexible Packaging Converter Cut Material Wastage by 43%

Industry

Flexible Plastic Packaging

Tools Deployed

Zoho Books, Inventory, Creator, Analytics

Project Duration

14 Weeks

Client Profile

Mid-size Pouch Converter, 3 Production Shifts

The Problem

No Shift-Level Yield Visibility

Each shift processed multiple SKUs on shared lamination and slitting lines. No system captured actual film consumption versus standard consumption per job order, so losses went unnoticed until month-end stock counts.

Delayed Shift Closeout Reporting

Shift supervisors compiled production logs in paper registers. Consolidation into spreadsheets took 4 to 6 hours per shift cycle, making real-time production decisions impossible and causing downstream planning errors.

Rework Costs Buried in Job Orders

Rejected pouches requiring rework were re-entered as new sub-jobs without linking to the original order. Rework material consumption, operator hours, and ink usage were absorbed into overhead, hiding true job-level profitability.

Solution Stack

Zoho Creator production floor apps

Production Floor App: Shift Log and Yield Capture

A custom Creator app replaced paper shift registers. Supervisors entered job order numbers, film roll IDs, actual meterage consumed, output weight, and rejection count on mobile devices at the line. The app computed real-time yield percentage per SKU and flagged any run falling below the target threshold, triggering an alert to the plant manager before the shift ended.

Zoho Inventory material tracking

Bill of Materials: Multi-Layer Film, Ink, and Adhesive Tracking

Each pouch SKU was configured with a detailed bill of materials covering BOPP, BOPET, and PE film layers, gravure inks per colour station, and solvent-based adhesive for the lamination pass. Inventory consumption was auto-deducted against each production batch. Variance between standard and actual consumption was recorded at batch close, giving QA a clear material efficiency scorecard per order.

Zoho Books job costing

Job Costing: Rework Orders Linked to Parent Jobs

Rework batches were created as child entries against the parent job order in Zoho Books. All additional material, labour, and machine time consumed in rectification was posted to the parent job, surfacing the true cost of poor first-pass yield. Monthly job profitability reports now showed which SKUs carried the highest rework burden, informing both pricing reviews and production process corrections.

Zoho Analytics

Operations Dashboard: Shift, SKU, and Line-Level KPIs

Zoho Analytics unified data from Creator, Inventory, and Books into a live operations dashboard. The plant head could drill from overall monthly wastage to a specific shift, line, and job order in three clicks. Trend charts tracked weekly yield improvement, rework rate by SKU family, and material cost per thousand pouches, replacing a 12-tab spreadsheet that had been the prior management tool.

Before vs After

Area	Before Zoho	After Zoho
Material Yield Tracking	Monthly stock count only. Variance unknown until books closed.	Real-time yield captured per shift per SKU via Creator app.
Shift Closeout Time	4 to 6 hours of manual spreadsheet consolidation per shift cycle.	Closeout reports generated in under 90 minutes, automated.
Rework Cost Visibility	Rework absorbed into overhead. Per-job rework cost unknown.	Every rework batch linked to parent job. Full cost attributed.
Film Consumption Variance	No BOM-level tracking. Standard vs actual never compared.	Variance flagged at batch close. Outliers trigger QA review.
Inventory Depletion	Manual GRN entries, often delayed by 24 to 48 hours.	Auto-deduction against production batches. Live stock view.
Management Reporting	12-tab spreadsheet compiled weekly by production planning team.	Live Zoho Analytics dashboard with drill-down to job level.

Implementation Phases

Discovery and Process Mapping

Weeks 1 to 2

Aaxonix consultants shadowed all three production shifts, documented each material touchpoint from incoming film roll to finished reel, and identified the 11 data gaps causing yield blind spots. SKU families were categorised by lamination complexity to prioritise BOM build sequence.

Zoho Inventory BOM Configuration

Weeks 3 to 5

Bills of materials were built for 68 active pouch SKUs, covering primary film layers, ink colour loads, adhesive quantities, and trim allowances. Standard yield percentages were set per SKU based on three months of historical production records provided by the client.

Zoho Creator Shift App Build and UAT

Weeks 6 to 9

The production floor mobile app was built in Zoho Creator, tested on shared tablets at each line, and iterated through two rounds of user acceptance testing with shift supervisors. Offline sync capability was added to handle intermittent WiFi coverage near the slitting machines.

Zoho Books Job Costing and Rework Linking

Weeks 10 to 11

Job order templates were configured in Zoho Books with parent-child rework linkage. The finance team was trained on reading job profitability reports. A GST-aware cost allocation template was built to handle the 12 to 18 percent GST impact on packaging material procurement correctly in costing outputs.

Zoho Analytics Dashboard and Go-Live

Weeks 12 to 14

All four Zoho apps were connected in Analytics. The operations dashboard was built to the plant head’s specification, reviewed, and approved before go-live. A two-week parallel run let the team verify that digital shift logs matched the paper registers before the paper process was retired.

Results at 90 Days

43%

Reduction in material wastage across all production lines

Rs28L

Rework cost recovered annually by attributing to parent jobs

67%

Faster shift closeout reports, from 6 hours to under 2

Monthly Material Wastage Rate (% of Input Film) Before and After Go-Live

Key Takeaway

In flexible packaging, margin erosion rarely comes from pricing alone. It comes from the centimetres of film lost between the unwind stand and the finished reel that no one is measuring. This converter had the production discipline to fix the problem once the data was in front of them. What they lacked was the system to surface it. Connecting Zoho Creator shift logs to Inventory BOMs, Books job costing, and Analytics reporting gave every level of the organisation the same number at the same time, and the wastage came down fast.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Zoho Creator suitable for production floor use in a manufacturing environment?

Yes. Zoho Creator applications run on standard Android tablets and can be configured for offline operation with periodic sync, which matters in environments where WiFi coverage is uneven near heavy machinery. The low-code platform also allows rapid iteration, so the app can be adjusted as production workflows evolve without a full redevelopment cycle.

How does Zoho Inventory handle multi-layer BOMs for flexible packaging SKUs?

Zoho Inventory supports multi-level bill of materials where each layer of a laminate structure, each ink colour load, and each adhesive component can be listed with a standard quantity and unit of measure. When a production batch is confirmed, the system auto-deducts each component from stock and records actual versus standard consumption as a variance, which is the core input for yield analysis.

How were GST implications on packaging material procurement handled in job costing?

Packaging material inputs in India attract GST at 12 to 18 percent depending on the substrate. Zoho Books was configured to capture the GST-inclusive landed cost of each raw material and use that as the costing basis in job orders. This ensured that job profitability reports reflected the true cost of goods consumed rather than the pre-tax invoice value, which would have understated material cost per thousand pouches produced.

What is the typical implementation timeline for a Zoho operations rollout in a flexible packaging plant?

For a plant with 50 to 100 active SKUs, three or four production lines, and multi-shift operations, a full Zoho Books, Inventory, Creator, and Analytics deployment typically takes 12 to 16 weeks. The largest variable is the time required to build and validate BOMs, which depends on how well-documented existing process standards are. Plants with strong process documentation can compress the BOM phase significantly.

How a Flexible Packaging Converter Cut Material Wastage by 43%

Challenge

Solution

Tools

How a Flexible Packaging Converter Cut Material Wastage by 43%