In any pharmaceutical facility, material handling systems and equipment play an important role in overall productivity of the plant. No matter how high capacity processing machines are installed, if the feed to these machines is not provided timely and consistently, the productivity of the plant go down drastically, more so the cost of re-starting some of the machines after a break.

Material handling starts from the raw material warehouse, till it reaches the finished goods warehouse. It involves warehouse racking, storage retrieval, pallet handling, pneumatic conveying, loading, and unloading of each unit operation, in process storage, tools & change parts management etc. During the routine operations, tons of raw material, semi-finished and finished goods are handled at different stages to process the material intended for final product. This constitute a major part of routine operation and undoubtedly has bearing on plant efficiency.

Why the need:

In general, facility design takes care of requirements related to man material movement as per cGMP guidelines and focus on processing equipment. However, often the part of material handling operations is overlooked by designers and decision makers largely due to missing focus and at times it is believed that material handling is not as important as the process machines and always can be managed later. In practice, when actual operations on the shop floor are performed, the need for proper material handling systems is felt by plant operating staffs. Thus, the design of the facility and selection of such material handling equipment requires a well thought out plan on the basis of operational needs of the plant so that all machines are being fed their respective raw material at an optimal speed without making machine operations to stop( or reduced speed) and thereby not affecting the throughput.

One of the crucial mistakes that any pharmaceutical company can make while enhancing the plant capacity is by not enhancing the material handling system. Generally, investors and stakeholders prefer to invest in high capacity machine during the capex phase of the project with a plan to expand the production by running the facility in multiple shifts and utilizing the production machines to maximum extend. However, for plant to run efficiently the auxiliary processes like Raw material storage, finished good storage as well as material handling system to provide right feed to processing equipment need a closer look and right balancing in order to not create a bottleneck situation. The enhancement in material handling system may include the following :

• Increasing the number of material handling equipment like IBCs
• Optimizing the use of material handling equipment
• Increasing the capacity of conveyors, pallets etc.
• Modifying the existing system designs so to cater localized need of the plant.
• Improvement in SOP of cleaning by adopting sanitary designed equipment

As companies grow in sales, the focus shifts to maintaining high inventory turnover ratio. For finished good warehouse this is achievable by increasing the dispatch and streamlining the downstream supply chain with the help of 3PL players. However, this puts stress on the Raw material warehouse as sampling, testing, and dispensing is standard process with defined time. Hence, to achieve higher output it is important to analyze all links in the network to reduce not have a weakest link that can break the chain. A holistic approach towards project investment decisions is, thus, an important aspect.

Overall equipment effectiveness is a standard for measuring productivity in any manufacturing plant. It identifies the percentage of manufacturing time that is truly productive. It helps in identifying bottlenecks in manufacturing chain thereby providing insights on further improvement to produce quality goods as fast as possible with no stop time of machine.

OEE = A x P x Q

Where:

A = Availability = Run time / Planned production time

P = Performance = (Ideal cycle time x total count) / Run time

Q = Quality = Good count / total count

The balancing act to increase OEE to a satisfactory level is very important.

	Week 1	Week 2
OEE	80.35%	81.23%
Availability	85.00%	90.00%
Performance	95.00%	95.00%
Quality	99.50%	95.00%

Companies would not want to increase Availability by 5.0% at the expense of decreasing Quality by 4.5%.

An average manufacturing facility, the OEE of a process equipment varies from 25 to 60% despite having good branded machines & good operating personnel. This means that there is inefficiency in the system from 40 % to 75% at various operations. If this is the case with you, then one of the reasons could be material handling system and it is time to review your material handling system once again to improve your equipment OEE effectively. Though the entire inefficiency can not be attributed to material handling alone.

Some of the desirable characteristics of Efficient Material handling systems are:

• Lean and flexibility: The lean and flexible systems can improve workable area, capacity expansion and ease of handling material with different specifications
• Efficient operations and control
• Continuity of operations
• Future expansion capabilities
• Degree of control
• Sanitary Design: Ease of cleaning and maintenance

Some of the examples of inefficient material handling could be as below:

• Materials are observed on floors of processing area due to spillage or uncontrolled transfer.
• Quality defects in product due to improper loading /unloading or storage.
• Manual transferring of samples and documents.
• Operator spending more time on material handling thereby effectively losing control on machine parameters and slowing down the machine
• Loading/ unloading held due to unavailability of material handling system.
• Due to poor quality, mobility devices are under break down very often.
• Change parts / tools are not retrieved on time when required and operator search the facility.

With greater focus on the material handling, all material handling in the facility should be mapped to understand the real issue at every stage. With assistance of today’s technology, the handling system could be improved for bringing efficiency to plant. Some of the things that you may review before selecting a material handling system/equipment are as following.

• Losses of material during handling could be in granulation, compression or blending
• Washing/cleaning time for product contact parts. (ready to take next batch)
• Toolless construction for product contact parts for easy dismantling & assembling.
• Mobility systems are reliable.
• RFID tagging of screens/tools
• Fast loading & unloading without quality issue
• Effective storage & retrieval system
• How to reduce mobility distance

Human quest for improvement has no boundary or limits and try to benchmark for betterment ever. Improving the material handling system could effectively improve the yield and OEE thereby decreasing the per thousand processing cost. Moreover, it will enhance better GMP and safety practices in the facility.