Philip Morris International (PMI) has been awarded the 2020 Gartner Supply Chainnovator Award in the “Consumer Products” category. The company won this award for developing all-in-one digital hybrid printing technology for folding cartons—a capability that enables the delivery of all printing, embellishing, and finishing elements in one pass—drastically reducing the route to market, from four months to seven days.

The Gartner Supply Chainnovator Award is an annual research program that identifies, assesses, and awards innovative, unconventional, and high-impact initiatives that are driving the transformation of supply chains. This year, over 100 companies across the globe submitted their leading innovations for consideration, and nominations were judged by a select group of Gartner’s supply chain executives.

“It is a great honor to receive this award,” explains Andreia Fontes, PMI’s director of Printing and Converting at PMI. “As we are undergoing the largest transformation in our company’s history, with a clear vision of a smoke-free world, the need for us to reduce the time to bring our smoke-free products to market is now more critical than ever. We had to completely rethink our end-to-end printing process, as printing digitally on cardboard packs at scale and high quality was simply not possible with the technology that was available.”

“With the volatility of today’s business environment, the ability to act rapidly is key. Just-in-time printing with digital presses can mean the difference between having the right smoke-free product mix at retail versus sitting on the wrong materials mix at production,” says Tony Snyder, PMI’s vice president of Product Portfolio Management & Deployment. “Being recognized for pushing the boundaries of what is possible is very powerful and rewarding for everyone who’s been working on this project for the last two years.”

With two new digital printing presses running commercial production in Romania, PMI currently covers over 70 percent of smoke-free products markets’ printed material requirements. Additionally, the company has one digital press in Neuchatel, Switzerland, which is used for development purposes.

Visit pmi.com to find out more about PMI’s use of digital printing to accelerate towards a smoke-free future.