Material Handling Equipment for the Pharmaceutical Industry
With the pharmaceutical industry flooded with competing generic drugs and strict regulations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the need for productive, sanitary and efficient processes is higher than ever. Many companies are struggling to keep up with the greater demands the industry is putting on them. A primary way you can improve your material handling processes is by investing in high-quality equipment designed to address the unique challenges of the pharmaceutical industry.
Jump To Sections:
- Problems Facing the Pharmaceutical Industry
- Solutions for Problems in the Pharmaceutical Industry
- Closed-Loop System
- A Sample Warehouse
- Testimonials
- Why Choose Cherry’s?
Problems Facing the Pharmaceutical Industry
The pharmaceutical industry faces many challenges today, and companies must respond to if they want to stay ahead in an increasingly competitive environment. These challenges include a shortage of skilled workers, lack of automated equipment needed, and struggles to meet proper sanitation standards in place.
Here are some of the top problems facing the pharmaceutical industry:
1. Sanitation
The FDA regulates pharmaceuticals heavily, and companies must follow their Current Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMP). A lack of proper sanitation can harm a drug’s potency or quality, which could potentially hurt consumers if it reaches them.
Noncompliance with FDA standards puts consumers at risk and can also halt your production process. An inspection violation can shut down your pharmaceutical warehouse until your facility is compliant, slowing your productivity significantly.
2. Product Safety
When you handle pharmaceutical products, one of your primary concerns should be maintaining your product integrity from the beginning of the process to the end. When your product isn’t handled correctly, it may degrade, losing its effectiveness. Cross-contamination can also occur if you store drug products near one another without proper separation.
Facilities that don’t have separates areas of operation for handling and storing products often have issues with cross-contamination and the introduction of impurities into their materials. Additionally, product degradation can occur when there’s constant particle-to-particle contact during the material handling process. This degradation can reduce your bulk material process yield, decrease its quality and even create dust containment issues that could harm the rest of the batch.
3. Labor and Productivity
Experts estimate that 50% of existing work activities in the pharmaceutical industry can be automated. Automating your material handling processes is crucial to the success of your operations. Without automation, companies often have a longer production schedule and higher costs per unit.
For operations that can’t be automated, companies also have issues with the machines being inefficient or injuring workers. Without updated equipment, your labor force is more likely to be injured, leading to a loss of productivity.
4. Efficiency
Another primary issue pharmaceutical companies face is setting up efficient handling systems for their products. In times of high demand, they need their materials to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. Some primary factors that lead to inefficiencies include obstructions, bottlenecks in the line and material spillage. Inefficiencies can lead to lower profits, unhappy clients and product loss.
With more companies trying to speed up their research and development times and reduce operational costs, they must have an efficient system backing them up. Due to the recent mass expiration of patents, pharmaceutical companies need to increase their efficiency to keep up with generic drug competitors and the reduced profit margins that come from these competitors.
Solutions for Problems in the Pharmaceutical Industry
While many challenges face those in the pharmaceutical industry, you can solve many of these problems with the right material handling equipment.
Here are some of the top solutions for challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry:
- How to keep materials clean and sanitary: Many pieces of sanitary equipment for the pharmaceutical industry warehouse are available to customers. Some of the top pieces of sanitary material handling equipment are plastic pallets and specialized washing equipment. Plastic pallets don’t suffer from hygiene concerns like rot and are easy to clean with washing equipment like pallet washers and pressure washers.
- How to maintain product safety: To maintain product safety, you can set up fully separated systems that handle pharmaceutical material prone to contamination. Additionally, once products have been processed and await shipment, you can use stretch wrappers. By wrapping materials, you help prevent product damage during storage. Additionally, robotic stretch wrappers can improve your company’s productivity by automating the wrapping process.
- How to improve productivity in the warehouse: Improve your warehouse’s productivity by incorporating automatic equipment into your pharmaceutical handling workflow. Products like automatic pallet changers and load transfer systems can transfer your products from one pallet to another quickly and automatically. Additionally, you can cut down on worker strain and injury by investing in equipment like stainless steel lift tables that take away the need for workers to stretch, bend and reach beyond their ideal ergonomic work range.
- How to increase efficiency: Take your efficiency to the next level with material handling equipment that get pharmaceutical products to needed locations as quickly as possible. Start by centralizing your pallets in strategic locations such as your Production and Packaging Areas. With the use of industrial pallet dispensers, you can access pallets to load, palletize, and transport product for shipping.
Closed-Loop System
Cherry’ Industrial has helped hundreds of pharmaceutical companies create a more productive, safer and cleaner workplace. Before investing in a closed-loop system let us help you: identify your internal challenges and problems facing your facility, view your current warehouse layout, track the flow of materials and goods from area to area and review ergonomic standards and work practices.
A closed loop system is a simple but hard to execute concept of minimizing the movement of raw materials from the receiving dock, through manufacturing to shipping efficiently. It is a discipline that uses equipment, automation, captive pallets and ergonomic assist positioners to maintain the highest level of sanitary, GMP and safety standards that protect the both the workers and consumers in the supply chain.
One building block of a loop system is clean and splinter-free in-house plastic pallets. To keep these pallets sanitized after use, you also need pallet washers to protect your products from dirt, allergens, dust, bacteria and other contaminants. Another critical part of a closed-loop system is transferring inbound products and materials onto a captive pallet.
Once set up, many components of this closed-loop system including automatic pallet changers, automatic pallet washers and automatic load straighteners all can handle materials largely autonomously, with the least amount of human touches and intervention. This ensures predictability and reliability to the process and materials are handled efficiently at the lowest cost.
In the blending and packaging areas where automation is not feasible and labor is necessary and needed worker assist lift tables, stainless steel pallet jacks and work positioners reduce lifting, strain and fatigue. Once products have been through the processing stages, you can use stretch wrappers and other wrapping equipment to protect finished products before shipping.
Five Benefits of a Closed-Loop System
You can access the many benefits of material handling solutions by creating a closed-loop system at your warehouse. Here are the top five advantages a closed-loop system provides:
- Improves worker safety: Moving palletized product from the receiving dock into the material storage area or from packaging onto the shipping dock with conveyors reduces heavy congestion from forklift traffic. A closed-loop system reduces manual material handling and prevents potential injuries and accidents while also promoting a much safer environment.
- Increases throughput: A closed-loop system will increase throughput by raising the amount of material passing throughout the system. For example, transfer systems automatically index staged loads, transfer finished products onto a shipping pallet and convey products downstream to a stretch wrapper, reducing wait time for staff. Additionally, the washing system automatically unstacks a single inhouse plastic pallet from the stack and tips it on edge. After doing this, it then cleans, rinses, sanitizes, dries and restacks without any lifting, manual handling or intervention.
- Significantly reduces labor: At Cherry’s Industrial Equipment, many of our customers attain a two-year ROI after the purchase and implementation of an automated pallet washer and load transfer system. Labor savings alone justified the initial purchase price of each machine. Additional returns were realized through better space utilization, improved processes and a cleaner workspace.
- Validates GMP guidelines: An automated washing system reduces human errors and mechanical issues caused by operator misuse. All operational movements and sanitation processes are predictable, controlled, repeatable, and measured, which is a required practice of the FDA’s CGMP standards. Only clean inhouse pallets are used for product, ingredients or packaging supplies entering the areas or rooms where products are being processed.
- Protects the supply chain: The use of clean and reusable plastic pallets greatly reduces physical or biological contaminants from entering the facility and processing areas. Cleaning the pallets of dirt, dust or chemical matter reduces contact contamination while also minimizing batch cross-contamination, allergens and potential product recalls.
A Sample Warehouse Layout
What might the ideal pharmaceutical warehouse layout look like?
Next, as you move toward the other side of the building, you have your operational facilities, from the mixing and blending room to your production and packaging lines. You may also have clean rooms or washing rooms in this section. The exact configuration depends entirely on your facility’s needs and the amount of space you have to work with.
Finally, you have the finished goods storage and your shipping dock to move your products out into the world and to their intended recipients.
This setup might sound incredibly simple, but it can help keep things running smoothly. By creating a closed-loop system, business owners can improve worker safety, boost output by up to 15% and reduce the return on investment for labor. They can also prevent product contamination and validate GMP guidelines.
Testimonials
Still not sure about the way material handling equipment and closed-loop systems can address the challenges those in the pharmaceutical industry are facing? At Cherry’s, we’ve assisted many pharmaceutical companies looking to improve their material handling equipment and processes.
The following are two customer testimonials concerning Cherry’s clients that illustrate how pharmaceutical industry material handling experts can help your company face challenges unique to your company:
1. Global Biopharmaceutical Company
A global biopharmaceutical company contacted Cherry’s Industrial about “touchless” pallet changers that transfer product loads from wood to a plastic pallet. The machine had to check all the boxes: easy to use, ability to handle various types of products, safe for the operator, meet or exceed global corporate specifications and comply with and mitigate risks identified in a machine risk assessment.
The Challenge
Requests like this are a challenge but not unique and align well with our company’s core strengths. Our consultative approach has been consistent for over 35 years, helping thousands of companies along the way. It involves asking tough questions upfront about the problem, managing the customers’ expectations, engaging the right people in the process, engineering the right solution, making the process simple for all and ensuring equipment is safe for the operators and personnel.
During the initial phone call, the customer shared some details of the project and had questions about the specifications of our machine. During the subsequent discovery phase, we learned this project involved a complete conversion to plastic pallets for in-house use. Pallet changers would be needed to keep the pallets captive, and a washing and drying system would be utilized for cleaning and sanitizing the pallets before reuse in the production areas.
Our Solution
Since it all starts with the pallet, we recommended and shipped to the customer a couple of pallet designs that were application specific and equipment friendly.
They evaluated two types of pallets and selected the ProGenic 9501 FM 40-inch by 48-inch plastic pallet due to its FM rating (fire specification), low weight (33 pounds) and 5-inch overall height not to mention its best-in-class cost and availability. The customer purchased a larger sample of 50 pallets for longer-term testing to confirm the pallets met durability and performance criteria.
On the equipment side of the solution, it was essential to involve all the right people to help design the right piece of equipment to change out the pallets. We set up a video meeting for both parties to review engineering specifications, application, operation and risk management.
Cherry’s configured a working machine with a live video feed where the customer could see the machine work and ask technical questions of our engineers and technicians in real time. This process was collaborative and resulted in a risk assessment, along with many design changes to the PC-80 to meet customer safety and space requirements.
The Result
The customer was impressed with the equipment and pallet solutions designed to work seamlessly in their system. They were also thrilled with access to our resources and industry experience, communication of important details and sharing of critical information.
2. Drug Manufacturer
A manufacturer of drugs and treatment for neurological disorders with multiple locations throughout the U.S. contacted Cherry’s Industrial looking for equipment that could be used to transfer inbound ingredients from a wood pallet to an inhouse plastic pallet.
The Challenge
In our initial conversations and discovery with the customer, we learned the customer hadn’t selected the pallet yet. From our experience in helping other companies with closed-loop systems, we know the process starts with the pallet. Selecting an inhouse pallet can be complicated. Unlike wood, plastic pallets are designed with molecular properties for durability, rigidity for racking strength and pliability that allows the pallet to bend but not crack. Additionally, the design and application are critical to successful use.
Our Solution
After consultative phone meetings and an onsite review, it was determined they needed rackable fire-rated FM plastic pallets that could be used in both cold and ambient temperatures. We were able to develop the specifications for the customer and provide product samples for testing. The project went out for bid, and Cherry’s Industrial was awarded the contract to provide FM rated plastic pallets for their four facilities.
Cherry’s expertise in their field and holistic approach showed the customer how to “future proof” the closed-loop system by selecting the right pallet first. The fire-safe, hygienic and equipment-friendly design made the selection of the pallet changer less complicated. It also offered some flexibility in purchasing ancillary pallet washing equipment when their funding allowed.
After successfully implementing a captive pallet program for the customer and through a further discussion regarding ergonomics and their current warehouse processes, Cherry’s was able to recommend and also supply stainless steel lift tables.
The Result
The customer came to Cherry’s looking for one piece of the puzzle and found a comprehensive solution from a local supplier that is attentive to their needs, exceeding their expectations.
Why Choose Cherry’s?
As you can see from our testimonials, you’ll be working with pharmaceutical industry material handling experts when you partner with Cherry’s. The benefits of working with Cherry’s are unmatched. We have a wide variety of material handling equipment solutions for the pharmaceutical industry, which you can browse and purchase to receive a boost to your warehouse’s productivity, sanitation, safety and efficiency.
If you have questions about how to layout a pharmaceutical warehouse or how to maximize space while meeting demand with our material handling equipment, contact us today.