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Pharmaceutical company packaging OEE's (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) are reported to be among the lowest in the industry. Experience teaches that those feeling the greatest amount of pain are the ones most likely to successfully drive change. Perhaps that is why three giant pharmaceutical companies reported on their efforts in this area at ARC's Forum on Winning Strategies and Best Practices for Global Manufacturers.
We may be OnTheEdge of a major growth spurt for robotics on North American packaging lines. That is what some, including Ben Miyares of Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI), reported at a robotics conference held over the weekend leading up to Pack Expo in Las Vegas last autumn. I think that this is great news for packagers! Robots can provide highly flexible automation options and mitigate capital risk on new lines that may be installed to support the launch of finicky new products. I'm not as confident that the news is as good for the robot manufacturers. While I would expect them to experience a portion of this growth, packaging machinery manufacturers have several options for bringing robotic functionality to end-users.
Pharmaceutical firms seek packaging line improvements to cut costs, biologics present packaging challenges, and medical device growth is driven by aging baby boomers. These treatment advances bode well for the healthcare/life sciences packaging community. Packaging materials need to offer protection from point of manufacture to the “last mile” where healthcare products reach a patient. Packaging materials must provide barriers for moisture, oxygen, light and heat, and they may include overt and/or covert security measures to combat counterfeiting and diversion. Equipment will need to package products more efficiently, be validatable and versatile.
Healthcare Packaging and Packaging World, producers of the Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum, and Ipack-Ima Spa, organizers of Pharmintech, announce a cooperative agreement in which Healthcare Packaging and Packaging World will offer promotional support to Ipack-Ima Spa, increasing the visibility for their Italian trade event, Pharmintech, to the U.S. pharmaceutical market. Pharmintech, held every three years in Italy, will next take place May 12th -14th, 2010 in Bologna, Italy.
Nowhere in packaging are flexibility and fast changeover more necessary than in the contract-packaging arena, where multiple customers and their many SKUs are a fact of life. That’s why ease of changeover was a key machine characteristic sought by Brecon Pharmaceuticals recently when it came time to install a new line for blister packing and cartoning of tablets. This fast-growing contract packager, acquired last year by Amerisource Bergen, is located in the UK near the town of Brecon, Wales. Both thermoforming and cold-forming of foil are routinely done on this new and highly versatile blister-pack line.
Providing quality healthcare while holding the line on costs continues to be a priority throughout much of the life sciences industry. Watching expenses is a critical task at Group Health as well, where the company’s Seattle facility handles mail-order prescriptions and serves as a central fill location for its 26 pharmacies located in both Washington and Idaho. Since adding a Maverick Enterprises UPM B/T (Universal Packaging Machine with Bottle and Tote infeed), Group Health has reduced its labor needs, improved efficiency within its confined 7,000 sq’ area, and readied itself to handle growing sales volume. In turn, those benefits help to hold down Group Health member costs.
Much like drivers appreciate the performance, handling, and flexibility of the finest sports cars,
Italian contract manufacturer/packager Fine Foods N.T.M. (New Technology Manufacturing) S.p.A opts for similar characteristics in the packaging machinery it specifies. As manufacturers speed their products to market, it increases the deadline pressures on companies such as Fine Foods. In turn, Fine Foods relies on packaging machinery for the flexibility and output it needs to meet the demands of its manufacturer-customers.
At a biomedical facility in Ireland, machine automation is coming into play in a validated environment that involves 21 CFR Part 11 electronic signatures, integrated robots and vision systems. The application is a real-world example of good automation standards providing real-world benefits. That’s according to Dr. Ken Ryan, director of the Center for Automation in Motion Control at Alexandria Technical College in Alexandria, MN. Ryan was recently interviewed by Ontheedgeblog.com blogger Keith Campbell. Also interviewed by Campbell was Shane Loughlin, president of SL Controls. Ryan and Loughlin were in Ireland at the time of the interview, investigating the healthcare packaging-related application that leverages automation standards to integrate best-of-breed equipment. The information in this article is excerpted from this recent interview. Listen to the complete podcast.
Michael Becker, director of engineering, Pfizer GmbH, reported on a four-year project, “FAST,” (Fully Automated Supply and Transport), recently completed at the firm’s Freiburg, Germany plant. The plant produces tablets and capsules of Lipitor, Valoron and Neurotin for 80 different countries in a wide variety of package configurations. The highly automated, computer integrated plan helped the plant achieve OEE comparable with other industries, depending on the equipment measured.
Based in Las Vegas, Med-Health is a combination of three independent businesses where Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technology from SAP will play a key role. Currently operating is a Med-Health business that sells medical supplies like gowns, gloves, sutures, and other "consumables." Opening this summer was a pharmaceutical drug wholesaler. And some time around January of 2008 will be the opening of a Med-Health pharmaceutical repackaging arm.
AstraZeneca recently piloted a new data collection system from Zarpac on a packaging line at its Westborough, MA, facility to collect data to identify ways to improve uptime. The results of the study were reported in a presentation March 29 at the Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum by Jeff Rosen, senior industrial engineer, Aseptic Manufacturing and Packaging for Wilmington, DE-based AstraZeneca.
San Juan’s Convention Center hosted the Feb. 1-2, 2007 Interphex Puerto Rico conference, with a keynote presentation delivered by Maridalia Torres, director of the San Juan district Food and Drug Administration office. One of the event’s highlights was a session focusing on Packaging End-of-Line Solutions, or PELS. It involves OEMs and controls suppliers working together to assist manufacturers of life science products.
Christian von Olshausen, process engineer packing at Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals Germany, will be a featured speaker at the Packaging Automation Forum May 23 in Chicago. His presentation will focus on how controls and automation technologies, properly implemented on today's packaging lines, can minimize unplanned downtime by contributing to Total Quality Management (TQM) and Total Productivity Management (TPM).
