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Process Strategies for Serialization Success

From mobile serialization cells to customized equipment, serialization systems may be unique to each application, but there are common approaches to solving them. An expert discusses success stories, and what factors should influence your strategy.

Process Strategy #3 involves moving serialization equipment between lines, which may fit a company’s needs for flexibility.
Process Strategy #3 involves moving serialization equipment between lines, which may fit a company’s needs for flexibility.

When we hear success stories, we often look for patterns that we can apply in our own lives. Serialization in pharmaceutical packaging is no exception. During a presentation at the Healthcare Packaging & Processing Conference co-located with this year’s PACK EXPO East in Philadelphia, Glenn Siegele, President and CEO at Omega Design Corporation, explained that serialization success stories share common themes. Each story has a clearly defined process strategy and a path to implementation. The underlining message in this presentation was to emphasize that serialization solutions may be unique to each application, but there are common approaches to solving them.

Process strategy

Siegele presented four typical process strategies that pharma companies can take:

  1. Serialize each of their product lines

  2. Consolidate product (SKU) into fewer lines that get serialized

  3. Move serialization equipment between lines

  4. Move product to a serialized work center(s)

Each strategy introduces pros and cons. It’s the pharma company’s role to prioritize which factors are most important:

  • Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which includes upfront capital costs, line down time, impact on line efficiency (OEE), implementation and support costs

  • Work In Progress (WIP) Management


  • Serialization Capacity and Percent Utilization

  • Production Scheduling Flexibility

  • Production Redundancy (risk management)

Implementation path

Once you determine which lines will be serialized, you will need to choose a path to implement equipment onto those lines.

Depending on your needs, the implementation path will be either a custom or pre-configured system. In this stage, you have to determine your priorities in terms of cost, complexity, features, the level of your design input, and delivery time. Of course, a custom system will come at a higher cost and longer lead time, but will offer more flexibility for features, complexity and your specific design requirements.

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