Packaging

White-Line – the latest Small Lot Solution from MediSeal GmbH

Tuesday 19. April 2011 - At Interpack, MediSeal is presenting the White-Line, a revolutionary packaging and logistics concept for blisters; it is a comprehensive response to the sharp fall in lot sizes and the resulting efficiency and logistics problems.

Driven by increasing competition, the patent cliff and a growing variety of presentations, lot sizes in the pharmaceutical industry have been falling continuously for several years. This not only has a direct impact on the efficiency of packaging lines but also adversely affects production costs through higher warehousing and depreciation costs for packaging material and product. With its range of blister lines fully optimised for fast changeovers, MediSeal has been offering solutions to increase efficiency at the level of production lines for many years. Since 2005, many customers have been using Late Stage Customization (LSC), a concept which allows many small lots to be combined, thanks to customization of blisters “at the last minute”, thus increasing OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency) of overall production.
An innovative packaging and logistics concept
With the White Line, MediSeal is going one step further and introducing an approach which encompasses and optimises the packaging and logistics concept of the whole company. Instead of a host of country-specific packaging materials and pack inserts, the White-Line concept is based on “white” (blank or unprinted) materials. Both lidding films and boxes and inserts are not printed with the country-specific information until they are in the packaging line. Inspection and camera systems provide a 100% check, guaranteeing pharmaceutical safety. With this concept, many small lots, which in a traditional production line mean very long changeover times, can be combined into one large lot. The switch to a different language is controlled automatically by a line management system and is completed within 10-12 minutes.
Higher plant efficiency and lower production costs
The advantages of White-Line production are impressive. Initial customer experience shows that small lots which previously took 4 days to produce owing to the long changeover times can now be processed in just one day. But it is not only line efficiency which can be improved dramatically. The concept also allows for an extremely fast time-to-market, as production can be started almost immediately after receiving national approval. No lead time for individual films, leaflets and folding boxes is needed, as only an electronic layout is required. This results not only in time savings but also lower storage costs. If the layout changes, existing inventory no longer has to be destroyed. Also, thanks to demand-based just-in-time production of the lot, the storage and depreciation costs for stored “residual lots” are reduced.
“With the White-Line we are addressing and resolving problems associated with small lots not by machine optimisation, but by a further evolution of the production process,” says Stephan Plewa, CEO of MediSeal GmbH. “In close cooperation with our customers we can achieve benefits which are impossible with traditional packaging lines.”