Packaging Design to Support Small Business Enterprises in the Republic of El Salvador

Abstract

As part of the “Program for Economy Promotion and Employment in Central America”, sponsored by German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GIZ), a new mechanism has been created to contribute to the goal of strengthening the competitiveness of micro, small and medium enterprises (SME) in Central America. The first phase of the program (2013–2015) was carried out in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and was used to finance technical assistance on innovative projects in the area of economic development and employment, with an emphasis on youth and women. One of the projects supported by the program was titled “Industrial design and digital manufacturing for better employment of young people in El Salvador and Costa Rica”, one of the goals of the project was to carry out a workhop with young students, developing interventions in the design and development of packaging for small local food production companies in El Salvador. The work developed by the design consultants, consisted in elaborating the didactic material, learning objectives for a course in virtual mode and a presential course where different applications of packaging were developed with SME located in San Salvador. This paper presents the results obtained during the development of the project, the visual and structural analysis, and the new design proposals of the previous packaging used by the SME, as well as a description of the didactic material developed and the evaluation of the intervention. Our research, in accordance with our work experience in the area, presents our economic proposal for the module “Fundamentals of packaging technology”, being approved by the organizing entities. The proposal presented involves the following activities: (a) Development of learning material (b) Selection and coaching of the required trainers (c) Development of the virtual diploma program, in the corresponding module (d) Development of packaging examples for SMEs of the region. It should be noted that the coaching of the people involved, required a stay at Don Bosco University for supervision and application of the virtual diploma module for 3 weeks.