Packaging Converter Sponsors Pharmaceutical Conference

PHILADELPHIA—This city may be many things to many people, especially sports fans, but what many forget is that Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs have been a center for pharmaceuticals for a long time. Two pharmaceutical powerhouses—Merck and Glaxo Smith-Kline—have headquarters in suburban Philadelphia, as well as McNeil Consumer Healthcare. In fact, the home office for North American Publishing Company (publisher of packagePRINTING) is located in what some call “the old Smith-Kline building.” All this being said, it seems natural that VIBpharma would select the City of Brotherly Love for its Pharma Packaging and Labeling USA conference.

The conference spanned two days and covered key security issues such as new ePedigree regulations, implementing RFID, track-and-trace systems, and product serialization, along with core techniques for increasing efficiency on the packaging line.

Day one revolved around issues affecting pharmaceutical packaging such as anti-counterfeitng technologies, legislative initiatives, standards, and ePedigree; day two focused on the global aspects of pharmaceutical packaging.

Lean manufacturing has become important in almost every facet of packaging and an entire session was dedicated to integrating Design For Six Sigma (DFSS) into product development. Not an easy task, moving toward Lean requires a commitment not only from management, but also from everyone on the factory floor.

The lead sponsor of the event, Catalent Pharma Solutions, hosted a tour of its Morrestown, N.J. facility on day three of the conference. Catalent is a global, full-service pharmaceutical printed component supplier with an integrated network of packaging operations.

Attendees were treated to a tour of its streamlined packaging operation where products are in perpetual forward motion. The company prints labels, folding cartons, inserts, outserts, and blister cards.

Attendees also experienced a live demonstration of Catalent’s e-MAGINEERING initiative, which replaces MRP systems and provides a more accurate representation of a customer’s inventory via visual, web-enabled monitoring. While it takes warehousing managers and workers some time to master the concept, it has proven thus far to be a very economical way to manage inventory and reduce waste.

One interesting note, actually from lunch after the plant tour, was how different people in the pharmaceutical world view the term compliance. January’s pharmaceutical packaging feature noted one pharma packaging trend is in the area of compliance—patient compliance. One attendee said when he thought of compliance, he thought about a package’s ability to comply with standards set out by regulatory entities like the FDA, not about patient compliance.

Next year’s conference is slated for Philadelphia again. I wonder if they know it’s taking place just blocks away from “the old Smith-Kline building.” pP