< PreviousFLOW MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL 20 Pharma Business International www.pbiforum.net OptimisingPharma Business International 21 www.pbiforum.net FLOW MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL © stock.adobe.com/ wacomka Ensuring product integrity, quality, and efficiency in the pharmaceutical industry relies on accurate flow measurement and control. We explore how precise monitoring and regulation help to enhance safety, compliance, and long-term business success. T here are many intricacies to the need for accuracy in flow measurement. First and foremost, it ensures that the right amounts of fluids or gases are delivered when and where needed. Whether it’s in the precise dosing of ingredients in pharmaceutical manufacturing, or the controlled distribution of fluids in chemical processes, accurate flow measurement and control enable consistent product quality and performance. Monitoring and controlling your stream of raw materials, such as chemicals and solvents, helps ensure that the right amount is delivered every time. This is critical for maintaining consistent product quality in a field where the right dosage is crucial to public health. 22 ÁFLOW MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL If applied to pre-existing quality assurance methods such as batch processing, attention to flow provides detailed levels of control to the collection and handling of ingredients. Raw materials are often subjected to various processing steps, such as mixing, heating and cooling, reaction or purification, and each may be happening simultaneously across multiple batches. Making and controlling measurements allows for keeping track of the multiple liquid or gaseous ingredients that may well be needed for certain pharmaceutical products, throughout these many complex systems of combining and refining. When your equipment capacity or specialisation makes batch processing an essential, your desired production requirements can be determined by flow measurement. For example, the capacity of pumps, reactors, heat exchangers or other equipment is determined based on the anticipated flow rates. Accurate flow measurement data is used to calculate the required size and specifications of the equipment, to ensure it can handle the anticipated flow rates without exceeding its capacity. Once equipment is installed and operational, your measurement data can then be used to verify its actual performance against its stated capacity. Flow meters or other measurement devices may be installed in the system to monitor flow rates easily in real-time. By comparing measured flow rates with your machines’ expected capacity, you can assess that all equipment is performing as intended. Any discrepancies can then be identified and addressed promptly to ensure optimal performance. If deviations do go unchecked, they may lead to variations in product composition, compromising efficacy at best and, at worst, putting lives at risk. Accurate flow measurement and control further contributes to risk mitigation in the workplace as much as across your customer base, preventing overflows, leaks or hazardous situations caused by excessive pressures or flow rates. By maintaining optimal flow conditions, these systems enhance operational safety and protect both personnel and equipment from potential harm. This hazard aversion of effective flow is also vital for regulatory compliance. The pharmaceutical industry may be subject to severe quality standards and guidelines, but they are necessary to ensure the safety and consistency of your products. Accurate flow measurement eases adherence to these regulations by providing the necessary data and documentation to demonstrate process control, precision dosing and your observance of validated manufacturing procedures. This enables your business to meet the requirements set by regulatory bodies, maintain a reputation, and build trust with both customers and stakeholders. While maintaining product and process integrity needs a lot of attention for these immediate reasons, flow measurement and control are equally essential for optimising your business model’s long game. By monitoring and regulating flow rates, businesses can identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks or potential issues in their operations. This knowledge allows for targeted improvements and adjustments to maximise productivity, minimise waste and reduce production costs. Moreover, precise flow control enables more efficient resource allocation, ensuring that energy, materials and time are utilised optimally. If your pharma business is looking to grow productivity, precise flow measurement enables better process control, reducing the risk of errors and variations that could affect product quality, or cause a need for rework or recall. This level of control is also crucial in optimising your energy usage. If you have industrial heating or cooling systems installed, for instance, flow meters help monitor and control the rates of water or other fluids for heat exchange. Accurately measuring how your liquid ingredients are moving helps identify inefficiencies, optimise machinery operations and adjust flow rates to match the actual demand. This enables savings and reduces operating costs, maximising the overall energy efficiency of systems. No business owner needs reminding how important stripping away energy and material wastage is to an economical process. Here, measuring contributes by ensuring accurate dosing and material handling, avoiding overfilling or underfilling containers. Material spillage can also be better moderated in conveyors, feeders or transfer systems, while monitoring effluents and emissions helps control waste outputs. Each of these being managed with care contributes to passing yet more regulations, this time for environmental compliance, identifying areas of waste generation for the application of targeted reduction measures. 22 Pharma Business International www.pbiforum.net© stock.adobe.com/ Quality Stock Arts Pharma Business International 23 www.pbiforum.netWAREHOUSING AND DISTRIBUTION 24 Pharma Business International www.pbiforum.net Making the most of a warehouse Making the most of a warehouse Pharma Business International 25 www.pbiforum.net WAREHOUSING AND DISTRIBUTION © stock.adobe.com/tiero W arehouse optimisation has become increasingly important as of late due to a lack of quality warehouse space combined with markets becoming increasingly more focused on their supply chains. This has made the distribution game difficult, and competition high to have the most streamlined and efficient system possible. Following that with fuel shortages and increased costs of living and transport, not to mention geopolitical events and the dangers of sea shipping now, and the situation has only gotten worse – forcing pharma companies to make the most out of the limited resources they have. Traditionally speaking, there are seen to be five methods to optimise warehouse space. These are catch-all methods, and won’t all be relevant to every company, but understanding the principles can help to identify areas for improvement. It’s rare to start at the end of such lists, but sometimes the final point is a little vague to intentionally catch the rest, so it’s worth considering it first. That being the issue of redundant processes. Obviously, as technology expands and warehouses change, being able to spot processes or practices that are inefficient or no longer needed, and removing them, can help to free up budget. This should always be considered first but is usually also the first thing to be noticed, so isn’t worth talking about too much. The other four The supply chain is being stretched, which means it’s up to warehousing and distribution centres to adapt to the demands and find a solution. But with space at a premium and construction not keeping up with demand, many companies are looking on how to get more from what they already have. 26 ÁWAREHOUSING AND DISTRIBUTION 26 Pharma Business International www.pbiforum.net are much more important. The first is space utilisation. This encompasses all methods by which space can be used more effectively, which includes things like investing in more rigid racking systems to allow for vertical storage, or even adding mezzanines for second floors. It also highlights the importance of aisle width, as even a few inches saved by tightening aisles could create an additional aisle when adopted across an entire warehouse. Of course, space needs to run hand in hand with safety, as it’s easy to prioritise too much and make aisles too thin, or stacks too high, and place workers at risk, or just make it much too inconvenient to reach goods, and thus cause delays. With many pharmaceutical products having very stringent requirements in terms of temperature and storage, it’s important to plan warehouse optimisation around that. This is not only to ensure goods are kept safe and at the correct temperatures, but also to ensure that each refrigerated section of a warehouse makes sense in terms of its placement. How close it is to loading bays, how the chambers are organised, and also how the storage of medical product will be monitored and tracked, which leads onto another matter, that of inventory location. AKA, how easy is it to find where a needed good or pallet is kept, and how visible is it at a glance? Automated systems and software can help here and should be employed at every stage to ensure that when a vehicle arrives, staff know exactly where the products they’re looking for are stored and, ideally, the most efficient way to get them to the Pharma Business International 27 www.pbiforum.net WAREHOUSING AND DISTRIBUTION vehicle in the shortest amount of time. Tying onto inventory location is inventory accuracy, which remains one of the most problematic issues in many warehouses. It’s not unusual to have cases where a system tells you where products should be, only to find they are not there. Usually, it’s not the system at fault but user error – either in inputs into the system, or with people misusing or skipping the system entirely and storing goods somewhere else. No software system will fix a warehouse if employees are making mistakes, and if goods are not where the system says they should be. Increased training in how to handle new software is important here, as most of these mistakes tend to occur in the weeks and months after a new system is introduced. Other times, however, it can be when existing staff do not see the need to change the way they do things, and thus ignore or resist changes put on them by warehouse managers. The final point, and one that can often be most expensive, is that of picking optimisation. Accurately knowing where products are, and how to get there, is no good if the efficiency at which they are collected and brought for distribution is at fault. Picking can be optimised with automated systems and expensive new forklifts in a pinch, but it can also sometimes be streamlined with consultation, planning and changed routes – which can be much more affordable than a complete hardware overhaul. As always, the long vs the short term does need to be kept in mind, as increased automation does tend to save money over time. © stock.adobe.com/hacohobCLEANING AND MAINTENANCE 28 Pharma Business International www.pbiforum.net Regular and often © stock.adobe.com/ ekkaluckPharma Business International 29 www.pbiforum.net CLEANING AND MAINTENANCE hygiene related – could well strike the death knell for a manufacturer. Of course, proper cleaning of those same machines also helps to reduce build-up of material that may lead to issues or damage later down the line. Investing up-front in some of the more sophisticated technologies on the market could pay dividends in the long run. For I t may be an unfortunate truth, but companies that carry out maintenance checks on a planned and routine basis are often left at the mercy of their machinery, unable to predict or react in time to any problems that occur. To stay ahead of the game, manufacturers need to implement constant on-the-spot inspections. Considering how tight many businesses are being run right now, any issues – be they of worker safety or © stock.adobe.com/ spyarm Maintenance and cleaning of pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment is obviously important on the issue of hygiene and consumer safety, but adhering to the bare minimum to meet these quotas could be costing factories when it comes to efficiency and machine longevity. 31 ÁNext >