Packaging engineering involves developing materials, complying with labeling laws, and designing packaging to promote sales. It requires expertise in physics, materials science, chemistry, and mechanical engineering. The industry is estimated to produce over $100 billion in revenue in the US alone. Packaging science programs focus on transportation, function, and ease of use. Graduates may work in structural design, purchasing, or research departments. Candidates with experience in the pharmaceutical or food industries are preferred.
Packaging engineering is an industry discipline that crosses many engineering, marketing and sales boundaries. This involves everything from developing packaging materials to complying with labeling laws and designing them to promote product sales. Industrial design fields such as packaging engineering increasingly require expertise in a variety of fundamental sciences, such as physics, materials science, and chemistry.
Mechanical engineering is also important to become a packaging engineering expert, as automation is a key component of packaging design. Overall arena is estimated to be the third largest industry in the United States as of 2011, producing over $100,000,000,000 US Dollars (USD) in revenue. Worldwide industry uses approximately $450,000,000,000 USD in raw materials and machinery annually.
Packaging science is not a new discipline. Rutgers, a leading university in the United States, claims to have the second-oldest program teaching packaging nationwide and has been offering it since 1965. The program focuses on elements such as transporting products from manufacturer to consumer, function of a package as silent seller and ease of use in package design. As this is a standard four-year programme, the first two years focus on common engineering challenges and the last two years on packaging regulation, graphic design, material use and more. Emphasis on a strong background in mathematics, computer science, and industrial engineering is required to pass the program, and the option exists to go on to a Master of Science (MS) or Ph.D. level of education.
As of 2004, packaging machinery sales were one of the fastest growing markets for automation equipment in Europe. Of the eleven machinery markets surveyed in one analysis, sales of packaging and labeling equipment were second only to machine tools. European manufacturing levels grew steadily during the 1990s and early 2000s and estimates from 2004 point to European packaging equipment manufacturing increasing at a growth rate of 6% per year. year.
Industrial engineering work in packaging engineering is unique in that the engineer does not work on just one aspect of a package’s life cycle. There is often involvement from the level of creating schematics, drawings and specifications all the way through to displaying the final product on a shelf. This brings everything else, including safety issues for package performance to environmental impacts and the cost of materials used. A packaging engineering job, therefore, may involve clients and suppliers interacting with patent protection attorneys and manufacturing managers to manage efficiency in the process of implementing new product series for packaging design.
Initial graduates who go on to work in the packaging engineering field are often placed in structural design, purchasing or research departments. Since packaging falls under a total marketing concept, it requires engineers with a diverse background in both business and science. Openings in any packaging engineering section of a business usually give preference to candidates who have previously worked in the pharmaceutical or food industries where safety and design issues are both equally critical.
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