Category definition
What is a packaging attribute register?
A packaging attribute register is a system of record for packaging components — what they are, the attribute values that describe them, and how they compose into a bill of materials. Each value can carry evidence, and every change stays traceable. It sits in the category the analysts call packaging specification management: the product information manager you would build for packaging compliance data — one register, every requirement profile, no channel feeds.
Four building blocks
Everything in the register is built from these — nothing more, nothing hidden behind it.
- 01
Attributes
Named, typed fields — text, number, choice, or yes/no, each with its own unit where it applies. You decide which attributes exist; nothing is baked into the product.
- 02
Item types
Item types are grouped into categories (a bottle and a pallet ask different questions) and each carries the set of attributes that apply to it.
- 03
Items
One row per real packaging component — a bottle, a cap, a box — holding a value for every attribute its item type asks for.
- 04
Bill of materials
An item can be composed of other items, with quantities: a finished packaging built from the components that go inside it.
Evidence, not assertions
A value in the register is worth what its evidence is worth. Attach a spec sheet or a declaration to the value it backs, and the change stays traceable — who changed it, when, and via which source (a person in the UI, a sector-package import, or the sync API). Requirement profiles then let you define which attributes a given item type must carry, and see per item which of those are still missing — the register shows the gap, you decide what "complete" means.
What this is not
A short, factual boundary — worth stating plainly rather than leaving implicit.
Not tracking hardware
No scanners, no IoT tags, no physical asset tracking. A register holds data about a component — it does not follow the physical item around a supply chain.
Not a compliance oracle
Requirement profiles let you define which attributes are mandatory for a given item type, and show which items are missing them — a gap check against a profile you define, not a ruling on compliance with any specific regulation.
Not version control
A value has one current state, with an audit trail of who changed what, when, and via which source. An item can sit in draft while its last confirmed state is held for a single rollback — but there are no releases, no baselines, and no querying an item as it stood on a past date.
What it is: one place for packaging attributes, evidence and bills of materials — built to enrich the ERP and DWH you already run, not replace them, and to answer every asker from the same record.