Image via Pixabay
Pharmaceutical businesses need the right kind of equipment infrastructure if they are to meet growing demand from the market. This is where solutions such as automatic vial filling machines can support pharma producers as they serve the needs of healthcare providers and the general public.
But are these machines really necessary? After all, sourcing and installing a vial filling machine — or a whole fleet of vial filling machines in the case of larger businesses — can be a significant expense. As organizations strive to become more cost-conscious, can they justify this kind of investment?
Investment is an appropriate word here. Implementing automated equipment and machinery really is an investment in the future, rather than simply an inconvenient expense. Vial filling equipment can shore up pharma businesses ahead of growth and expansion and can actively save money in the long term. Read on to learn more about the benefits of these pieces of equipment.
What Is a Vial Filling Machine?
An automatic vial filling machine is an important piece of equipment within the pharmaceutical design, manufacture and distribution chain. This machine takes a pharmaceutical product — generally a liquid material — and places this product in a vial so it’s ready for the next phase of the chain.
The machine may be deployed at the end of the production process, placing the pharmaceutical material into a vial to be ready for packaging, distribution and sale. However, it may also be deployed earlier in the process, perhaps for filling vials ahead of testing and quality control protocols or simply for filling containers with samples.
Advantages of a Pharmaceutical Vial Filling Machine
There are many advantages to using a pharmaceutical vial filling machine when compared to the alternatives, such as relying on manual filling processes. Let’s take a look at some of the main benefits to businesses in this field.
Dose and Volume Consistency
In the United States, the Food and Drug Authority (FDA) oversees the production and distribution of prescription drugs, as well as other controlled substances. The FDA requires that all such products be clearly labeled and designated before they are released for sale or for general consumption and that dosages and volumes are clearly advertised on the packaging. This means pharma production companies must be very careful to ensure volumetric consistency when they are bottling and packaging their products.
This kind of consistency is difficult to achieve using only manual processes. A pharmaceutical vial filling machine, on the other hand, can be configured and assessed ahead of time, ensuring that only the properly mandated volume is added to each and every vial. Producers can be penalized heavily if they do not adhere to the FDA’s requirements, so this machine provides significant peace of mind for pharma manufacturers and distributors.
Reduced Production Costs
Manual procedures can be expensive for pharma producers. Not only do organizations need to divert working hours and resources to manual production tasks, but they also need to implement fixes and remedial action if mistakes and errors occur. Vial filling machines eliminate both of these additional costs, reducing the overall expense of running a production job.
Automated machines also free up valuable personnel and teams. These teams can then be deployed in other areas of the business — areas more suited to manual operation, such as research and development tasks as well as process monitoring and assessment.
Easier Quality Control Processes
Vial filling machines achieve uniform consistency across all filling tasks. This means, whenever the machine is configured and set up ahead of a new production batch, your team can be assured that the results will be repeated again and again across all the vials that need to be filled.
This makes quality control much easier. The machine ensures that a reliable base level is achieved and that there are no inconsistencies even across high-volume jobs. Quality control teams simply need to check that the packaging and labeling are present and undamaged, then they can sign off on the latest batch. With fewer variables and less potential for mistakes, the entire quality control process becomes much more effective.
Rapid Scalability
Order volumes may fluctuate over time. If a pharma producer is relying on manual processes, they may struggle to achieve the kind of flexibility and agility required to keep up with demand. In turn, they may fall behind in the market.
With automated processes and equipment, businesses will find it easier to step up production when required. This leads to a far more efficient and effective pharma production line, even at scale, ensuring that healthcare providers and pharmacists remain well-stocked all year round.
Shrinkage and Loss Protection
A pharma manufacturer and distributor exists in a unique ecosystem, providing critical products to the healthcare industry. However, they are still governed by the same market forces as any other type of business, which means they need to remain aware of their bottom line and keep costs low across the whole process.
Manual vial filling processes make it difficult to keep costs low. Materials are spilled or contaminated, and products become lost or damaged. This contributes to shrinkage, increasing the cost of each batch while eating into profits. Ingredients also need to be re-ordered from the supplier or re-produced in the plant itself, resulting in an inefficient supply chain. Automatic vial filling machines avoid this issue, reducing lost or damaged materials and maximizing the profits achieved across each and every batch.
Sustainable Vial Filling Machines Help Manufacturers Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
When the outlook appeared bleak during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine manufacturers stepped up and performed admirably, delivering inoculations on a vast scale. Now, equipment solutions such as vial filling machines are helping manufacturers remain sustainable and eco-friendly.
But how has this been achieved? Why are vial filling machine manufacturers so crucial to the ongoing viability and sustainability of the vaccine development process? We explore this in greater detail, looking at how vial filling machines are changing the game for vaccine carbon emissions.
Reducing Wastage for Vaccine Doses
Reducing wastage of vaccine doses has always been a key priority for pharma manufacturers. Doses that become damaged or contaminated or materials that are spilled or lost represent doses that cannot be delivered to clinics and administered to patients. If too many doses are lost to wastage, the entire inoculation procedure becomes dangerously inefficient, making it more difficult to ensure the 70% to 85% vaccination rates considered necessary to halt the spread of the pandemic.
But, from a carbon point of view, there are other dangers to consider. Any vaccines that are lost will need to be replaced, which means manufacturers need to work harder to fulfill the demand placed upon them. This is probably where the biggest advantage of vaccine filling machines comes into play — filling machines achieve dose standardization and eliminate manual processes that can lead to wastage. With standardized doses, there is no spillage or wastage, while automated processes ensure that no doses are lost.
Eliminating Damage to Vials
It’s not just the manufacture of the vaccine dose itself that leads to carbon emissions. All other materials, receptacles, equipment pieces, and other items associated with the process need to be manufactured too, and this means a release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Studies have identified the manufacture of the vaccine vials themselves as a particularly significant source of emissions.
Manual processes are not only inefficient, but they can also be wasteful. Vials are dropped, broken, damaged, or misplaced, and then inventories need to be replenished. This replenishment results in additional carbon emissions, further reducing the environmental sustainability of the overall process. But with vial filling machines in place, this manual contact with vaccine vials is minimized, and the vials are far less likely to be broken or damaged. As fewer vials need to be replaced, the carbon footprint of the operation is diminished.
Supporting More Streamlined Operations
The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented demand for vaccines. Manufacturers need to produce doses on a scale that is almost unheard of, while still achieving high levels of quality control across all batches. In order to meet this demand, the production landscape has grown more complex. Now, as well as in-house teams from major pharma producers, third-party service providers are also required to meet high levels of demand. This results in complicated systems in which pharma manufacturers are working together with vaccine CDMOs (contract development and manufacturing companies), producing enormous batches of inoculation doses.
For this new order of operations to be successful, careful management is required. Let’s look at a simplified model of how this might work. For example, a pharma production team develops the vaccine and formulates the dose. They then pass these doses on to a CDMO partner who completes the vaccine fill/finish process for the manufacturer. Once this process is complete, the CDMO passes the inoculation batches on to another partner who handles distribution.
Immediately, we can see weak points in this chain — namely, the points of handover between operational partners. With automated systems such as vaccine filling machines in place, teams can mitigate these vulnerabilities. For instance, the pharma manufacturer delivers doses to the CDMO, and these doses are fed directly into the vial filling machine. Once filled and sealed, the production line continues, and the doses are automatically delivered to the distribution partner. The process becomes unified and streamlined, with key operations handled only once without overlap. As a result, the carbon efficiency of the entire procedure is increased.
More Reliable Cold Chain Processes
Another carbon-intensive area of vaccine production is the cold chain. Vaccine production relies upon cold chain technology to ensure that the proper conditions are maintained at all points during manufacture. If temperatures become too high, the vaccine dose may become spoiled, decreasing the efficiency of the operation. However, at the same time, efforts must be made to ensure that refrigeration is handled in a sustainable and ecologically viable manner.
Composite vial loading trays can help to ensure that the cold chain process is made as efficient as possible. The most important benefit of the filling machine, in this context, is how easily it can be integrated with other parts of the production line. We’ve already discussed above how vaccine doses can be fed through the production line, into the vial filling machine, and then onward into packaging machines ready for distribution. This unified process makes it far easier to achieve efficiency in refrigeration and cooling, reducing the carbon emissions required to ensure reliable temperatures and climatic conditions.
A Critical Part of the Pharma Production Line
Manual vial filling may be cost-effective and efficient at a very small scale, and low-level pharma producers may not feel the need to invest in an automatic vial filling machine. However, as order volumes begin to rise and businesses find themselves working with ever-larger batches, automatic filling equipment becomes invaluable. Without them, it becomes difficult to ensure a safe and reliable level of quality control in the pharma industry, and it becomes almost impossible to keep the cost of production at a manageable level.
About Author
Neel Daphtary
Neel Daphtary is the President of Chemtech International. He oversees sales, distribution and business development. He excels at helping pharmaceutical and manufacturing firms find the right processes and environmental solutions. Neel is an active member of Global Philadelphia, an organization committed to community development in PA.
Have Any Questions Or Comments?
Call Us For Help!
888-709-8070