The pharmaceutical trade is closely regulated to make sure the protected supply of medicines and healthcare merchandise. This makes it a very difficult trade after we’re speaking about transport and logistics.

There are lots of useful functions of robotics within the pharmaceutical trade, together with the meeting of medical gadgets, filling and sealing medicinal merchandise, and machine tending of check gear. Nevertheless, palletizing is usually top-of-the-line first automation initiatives within the pharmaceutical trade, as it’s simple to deploy and might have a fast payback time. And it may possibly immediately have an effect on your logistics.

Palletizing is a key step for guaranteeing the integrity of your merchandise throughout cargo. When you use the flawed forms of pallets, pack them incorrectly, or fail to fulfill the mandatory laws, you would jeopardize a complete cargo.

On this article, we discover how pharmaceutical corporations can use robotic palletizing to fulfill cargo laws and assist make their end-of-line course of extra environment friendly.

Why laws are key in pharmaceutical logistics

The pharmaceutical trade is notoriously gradual to undertake new applied sciences due to the strict laws that have an effect on nearly all features of a enterprise.

The precise laws that govern your pharmaceutical firm’s logistics will rely on the place you might be on the planet.

For instance, Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) are one set of laws that apply to European and American pharmaceutical corporations, amongst others. The GMPs dictate that it’s essential to guarantee the standard and security of your merchandise in any respect levels of manufacturing, together with throughout transportation and storage.

The rationale for this deep regulation is obvious: the standard of pharmaceutical merchandise immediately impacts individuals’s well being. In different industries, say the patron items trade, the impacts of poor high quality are usually much less catastrophic than within the pharmaceutical trade.

Logistics is essential for a spread of causes, reminiscent of:

• Late delivered or broken orders can result in sufferers not receiving doubtlessly life-saving merchandise.

• Poorly packaged or shipped merchandise can compromise the effectiveness or security of these merchandise in ways in which won’t be apparent (reminiscent of transport merchandise on the flawed temperature).

• Dangerous monitoring of merchandise can imply that the flawed merchandise are despatched to a medical institution.

By bettering your cargo course of – reminiscent of by including robotic palletizing – you’ll be able to scale back these dangers, serving to you to fulfill the related laws for your corporation.

The chilly chain in pharmaceutical logistics

One facet of logistics that’s massively essential for pharmaceutical corporations is the idea of the “chilly chain”. It performs a essential position in delivering temperature-controlled merchandise safely.

Chilly chain administration includes a spread of methods, practices, and applied sciences to move and retailer perishable items, reminiscent of biopharmaceuticals. It’s important for sustaining the integrity of merchandise, reminiscent of vaccines and medicines.

In an effort to keep compliant with regulatory requirements, it’s essential to be sure that your perishable merchandise keep in an uninterrupted temperature-controlled surroundings throughout your entire product journey from manufacturing to lastly being administered to a affected person.

How automated palletizing can assist meet pharmaceutical packaging necessities

A problem with chilly chain packaging is that chilly warehouses will not be comfy environments for human employees. Working lengthy hours in chilly rooms could be detrimental to individuals’s well being and scale back their job satisfaction.

Hazards for individuals working in chilled warehouses embody bodily discomfort, numbness in limbs and fingers, impaired bodily and psychological functioning, and life-threatening hypothermia.

By automating your palletizing course of, you’ll be able to assist to cut back these dangers for employees.

Different advantages related to automated palletizing for pharmaceutical logistics embody:

• Improved consistency of pallet hundreds — Guide palletizing doesn’t assure the optimum weight distribution of pallet hundreds, which may result in instability and product harm. Automated options palletize in the identical means each time.

• Higher use of human labor — In lots of components of the world, it’s exhausting to seek out people who find themselves keen to work in any packaging and logistics jobs, not to mention these in chilly environments.

• Quicker turnaround instances — The improved productiveness and consistency that may include robotic palletizing implies that you reliably ship merchandise sooner. In such a time-sensitive trade as prescription drugs, this will grow to be a aggressive benefit to your firm.

For an inventory of further advantages of palletizing robots for pharmaceutical corporations, try our earlier put up.

Key components of a profitable robotic palletizing course of

What features of a robotic palletizing answer are most essential when product integrity is your prime concern?

Some components to search for in an answer embody:

• It will likely be simple to combine and function with out quite a lot of robotics experience in your group.

• It might probably deal with the dimensions and weight of product bins you employ.

• It might probably attain the peak essential to stack a complete field.

• You may combine it with any monitoring applied sciences mandatory for product traceability.

• The supplier of the answer understands the palletizing trade and has a historical past of working with pharmaceutical corporations.

Additionally, you will most likely produce other components which can be essential to your particular logistics course of. One of the simplest ways to make sure that a selected answer will meet these wants is to get involved with the supplier and ask about your necessities.

Is robotic palletizing the precise answer for guaranteeing your product integrity

When your pharmaceutical merchandise are in excessive demand, it may be difficult to distribute them effectively whereas nonetheless assembly the logistics laws.

A robotic palletizing answer could be the proper answer to shortly scale back the bottleneck round palletizing. It might probably assist to make your palletizing employee’s jobs extra satisfying whereas concurrently bettering the consistency of the palletizing step.

There are, after all, many features of a pharmaceutical manufacturing course of that can have an effect on product integrity. Palletizing will solely have an effect on these associated to cargo. Nevertheless, including a robotic could be such a fast win for a lot of corporations that it is sensible to discover whether or not it may work to your pharmaceutical firm.

What difficulties do you have got round pharmaceutical logistics? Inform us within the feedback beneath or be part of the dialogue on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Fb.