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Packaging's Role in ‘The Fate of Pharma’

Costs, market consolidation, regulatory scrutiny and other factors put the pharmaceutical industry under pressure, but what does this mean to the function of packaging within the pharmaceutical sector?

Editor’s note: In a recent storyAutomation World Senior Editor Stephanie Neil wrote about how Big Data and the Internet of Things will play an important role in the future of pharmaceuticals. To learn more about what role packaging might play in helping the pharmaceutical industry address multiple market pressures, Healthcare Packaging spoke with several experts in the supplier community who regularly respond to the needs of pharma manufacturers.

 

“In addition to lowering prices, improving quality and accelerating time to market, pharmaceutical companies face further challenges related to two factors that are compounding these challenges,” says Alan Shuhaibar, President, BellatRx. “Namely, the thinning or leaning of manufacturing operations and the vacuum left by retiring skilled labor.

“The leaning of manufacturing, which also trickles down to packaging, requires companies to produce with the challenges mentioned above, but with fewer human resources than ever before. Additionally, the skill set of a new labor force falls short of that of the retiring skilled labor pool, leaving a huge gap that pharmaceutical companies need to bridge in order to remain competitive and I hazard to say, [to remain] relevant.”

Shuhaibar suggests that two complementary approaches are being followed in packaging and processing of pharmaceuticals, leading to the call for more collaboration between pharmaceutical companies and OEM’s.

“One avenue is to make packaging equipment easier to use, setup and maintain to allow a less-skilled labor pool to achieve intended efficiencies of the equipment,” he says.“This calls for simpler, more intuitive interface with the machine (think of your smartphone), sensors and monitoring to help machines be self-diagnosing to assist with troubleshooting and problem-solving.”

And, he continues, “the relying on the Internet of Things, having the packaging equipment connected to the web to allow for up to date and collaborative short training videos, troubleshooting tips, up-to-date parts lists and manuals that are always up to date.”

The second complementary part of this drive to bridge the skills gap, says Shuhaibar, “is to improve training methods with the collaboration of the OEM to allow a less-skilled workforce to identify setup points, single position adjustments that fall into to place, and as one of my colleagues said, ‘take the artistic touch that resides at the fingertips of skilled technicians out of the setup process.’”

Packaging can’t be an afterthought

Richard A. Bahr, President and CEO of MGS Machine, voices concern that packaging sometimes seems to be an afterthought.

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INTRODUCING! The Latest Trends for Life Sciences at PACK EXPO Southeast