Vendor management is the discipline through which companies seek optimal value from the combined total of their vendors. The management of packaging vendors, therefore, is a component of vendor management.
Since vendor management encompasses all of a company’s purchases, it’s helpful to recognize why packaging presents certain challenges. Packaging is performed at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, and any given level can require multiple vendors. For example, the primary packaging for a beverage might consist of a bottle, label, and closure. Then there’s the likelihood that a company will have more than one vendor for a given packaging item. Complexities further increase in proportion to the number of different products a company has in-market. Even a small company can have a considerable number of packaging vendors.
