Designing for Success:
The story behind the Tetra Evero™ Aseptic
Tetra Pak’s biggest splash of 2011 was the Tetra Evero Aseptic. Since its launch in May, the packaging solution has earned praise from the industry as the first aseptic carton bottle for milk.
Tetra Evero Aseptic has many commercial advantages: new levels of convenience in a pleasing package that has consistently topped consumer surveys; outstanding value for producers, with lower investment costs, a smaller factory floor footprint, reduced operating costs and lower energy consumption compared with similar bottle solutions; and a strong environmental profile.
“This isn’t a compromise product,” says Alexander Krivolapov, Product Director for Tetra Evero Aseptic at Tetra Pak. “It has the environmental and protection benefits of a carton with the functionality and convenience of a bottle. It is the best of both worlds.”
The story of Tetra Evero Aseptic is not, however, just about its ground-breaking features. It’s also about how a highly complex system, addressing a real market need, came to fruition in record speed — 40 per cent faster than the typical product development cycle at Tetra Pak.
Giving life to Tetra Evero Aseptic
Tetra Evero Aseptic was, effectively, a pilot project for Product Creation Redesign (PCR), a business process that has reinvented the way products are developed at Tetra Pak. As such, it was the first development project to exploit a deeper understanding of the attributes defining the success of a product — centred around customer needs — and improved methods for transforming that understanding into engineering requirements.
Several key differences defined the Tetra Evero Aseptic project. First, the project was also more limited in scope than past projects. The team was given a very specific task: creating 1 litre packaging for ambient white milk. This focus made a huge difference to the speed of development.
Second, suppliers were involved more deeply than ever before. Previously, all the specification and design work was done by Tetra Pak staff, and suppliers were told later what they had to do. “We realise now that we cannot be experts in everything, and we strive to build partnerships with key suppliers who are as unique, capable and passionate in their field as we are in ours,” says Jennifer Severinson, Project Manager for Tetra Evero Aseptic.
Third, internal collaboration was different. In the past, product development at Tetra Pak was done almost entirely by the Development & Services Operations (DSO) which is the research and development arm of Tetra Pak. People from marketing or in market companies would explain what they needed to the DSO staff, which would develop something, and then it was passed to the supply chain to manufacture. This left considerable room for misunderstanding and led to suboptimal solutions. So Tetra Pak looked to other industries — notably automotive and aerospace — for a better way of working, and adopted several new methods to accelerate Tetra Evero Aseptic’s time to market.
Now, product development is not solely governed by the DSO, it’s a cross-company project. For Tetra Evero Aseptic, the Marketing and Product Management department was involved all the way through, not only at the start, and Technical Service played a role in bringing its experience of older systems into the process while learning what would be required to service the new system.
Learning to swim
The Tetra Evero Aseptic project pioneered a new approach to workflow that is now standard practice at Tetra Pak. Instead of focusing on ‘toll gates’ or ‘milestones’, the team came up with the concept of ‘swim lanes.’ With this approach, everyone in the core team has accountability within their own lane, and critical tasks in each lane are always clear. Weekly meetings including the line organisation and project team make use of a large, visual project board that shows every work package. When there is a deviation from the critical time path, the person responsible is expected to develop a recovery plan and report back the following week.
“Making these major changes was not without pain and tough discussions,” says Severinson, who needed to have a strong voice to lead all the contributors across Commercial Operations, DSO and Supply Chain. “What made it harder was that line and project managers have historically had different goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Not anymore. Today, everyone involved is measured on the project’s success, not just the project management organisation.”
Success in the field
Another key success was in the field testing. “We needed to find the right partner,” says Severinson. “We wanted to rent space, buy the milk and run several hours of production to evaluate the performance from a technical, rather than a commercial, aspect. We needed a customer who was bought into our way of testing and was really quality-focused.”
The road ahead
Already, Tetra Evero Aseptic is in use — or being installed — by several companies in Europe and South America, and momentum is building. What is next, then, on the Tetra Evero Aseptic product road map?
“Our first step is to introduce retrofitable solutions that will increase the value of the available installed base, says Alexander Krivolapov, Product Director for Tetra Evero Aseptic. “We will add a specification for oxygen-sensitive milk, a very important step.”
“Looking at what we have achieved, I’m so proud of the team: their commitment and the way they came together,” says Severinson. “We stretched beyond what was thought possible, and proved we can work in new ways. Now we have to continue!”
View the Tetra Evero Aseptic campaign
For more information please contact
Francesca Balestrazzi, Tetra Pak, Cell: +39 340 127 3084
Matina Macintyre, Waggener Edstrom, Tel: +44 20 7632 3888