The Power of Partnerships in Supporting Manufacturing Start-ups

Lessons and Insights from Paboco’s Growth Phase

Modern manufacturing requires companies to embrace a culture of change. 

Adaptability therefore needs to be embedded in all levels to quickly, and more effectively, react to new circumstances and information. Paboco has been able to design its facility and processes in a way that’s inherently flexible, building on its proprietary process and supported in consistent automated processes by Rockwell. Through the experience, there are several insights that provide useful guidance to any start-up manufacturing business:

1. Develop a consistent and honest brand story from end to end. Our customers know that Paboco’s products are environmentally sustainable, but it’s important that the same approach is taken towards our manufacturing. Working with Rockwell Automation we’ve been able to focus on energy efficiency and maintaining a clean supply chain that mitigates potential environmental issues, reinforcing the story we tell about our products.
   
   
2. Focus on your core business. Start-ups are typically built on an area of specialty, where they’re able to deliver on a specific customer need better than the market incumbents. Start-ups can’t be experts in everything, and if they try to be they’ll spread themselves too thin. We want to focus on packaging innovation, product development and manufacturing. Therefore, we can’t afford to over-allocate resources on minute details around automatization components. Being able to leverage Rockwell’s expertise in this area has helped us to maintain our core focus.
   
   
3. Prepare for operational disruptions. Start-ups are renowned for a more improvised, fail-fast approach to product development. While we embrace experimentation at a product level, it needs to be reinforced by reliability at a technical level. Taking risks on the robustness of our machinery wasn’t an option. We needed to make sure our platform was flexible enough to deal with changing circumstances, and that any disruption to machines – such as parts failure – could be dealt with swiftly. Being able to lean on Rockwell’s expertise supply chain of automatization components was invaluable in this regard.
   
   
4. Plan for scale. The packaging industry relies on huge scale – even producing samples involves the creation of units numbering in the hundreds of thousands and beyond. While we started small, we had to plan big. Scalable and customizable machinery built on robust components and repeatable processes helped us meet our ambitions rapidly.
   
   
5. Be clear on the value you can offer your partners. As a start-up, there’s a lot for us to gain from working with more established businesses – including well established experience, strong understanding of the products offered, machinery and automatization experience, regulatory knowledge and a global network. But it’s important Paboco is also clear on what other companies can gain from us to fuel a long-term relationship. In working with Rockwell, we’ve also been able to offer our fresh perspectives and approaches towards agile operations, innovation and sustainability, which helps to make the relationship symbiotic.

Supporting Future Ambitions

Given the evident global supply chain challenges, companies and consumers alike are recognizing the value of local production. This approach not only increases the reliability of supply, but also adds to the product’s sustainability credentials.

Paboco has ambitions to develop an international network where products can be distributed locally. The nature of the product means that local distribution is imperative. Having standardization and replicability at a manufacturing level will help in taking the Copenhagen blueprint to new countries, while maintaining consistency and quality as its customer base grows.

Both partners have a shared vision that the continued effort to automate Paboco’s production processes, building on the core capabilities of Rockwell, will be an ideal mix moving forward on the scaling journey – to put a paper bottle in every hand.

Find out more about how digitalization can help your business at the Management Perspectives hub, where you will find resources for executive industrial decision-makers, providing the information you need to thrive in the evolving digital landscape.