Material Handling

Hygiene Issues In Pharmaceuticals

 In our previous article “RAGHAV in Automobile”, we saw how RAGHAV works effortlessly in an automobile industry to efficiently overcome the hurdle of low productivity caused by material handling. As we have always underlined, RAGHAV has not one, but many wide spread applications in the manufacturing sector and is able to solve countless problems that these industries face. Let us look at one such very important industry namely pharmaceuticals.

Medical and pharmaceutical is a fast growing field all over the world. Surveys have shown an annual growth rate of about 4% to 7% in the pharmaceutical sector, which is considerably large. Manufacturers are always under pressure to keep up with the increased demand because of the advances and breakthroughs in medical research. While achieving high efficiency, they also have to maintain rigorous quality standards – most of which are government imposed. Hygiene plays a very important part in maintaining these regulations. But at the same time, it is very demanding and hence creates a lot of concerns. In today’s topic, Hygiene Issues in Pharmaceuticals, let us see how conserving hygiene is a complex subject for pharmaceutical companies.

  • Personal Hygiene: The workers in a pharmaceutical company are supposed to follow very strict guidelines for personal hygiene. They have to go through numerous trainings and timely health checkups to make sure they are free from any diseases. But despite of making the zillion rules, it is quite difficult to keep a watch if everyone adheres to them all the time. Studies show that even as simple a task of washing hands with soap or wearing gloves and masks before handling the products is not followed many a time. Such practices degrade the quality of products. When material is handled manually, may it be the raw material or finished products, there is definitely greater risk of contamination.
  • Material Hygiene: The raw material in a pharmaceutical industry can by itself be hazardous if stored or handled improperly. It has to be stored at a certain fixed temperature, with appropriate moisture control and many more preset conditions. If these criteria are not met, the resources are bound to get soiled, rendering them useless. Likewise, the manufactured products also need to be kept under similar hygienic conditions and handled carefully.
  • Hygienic Premises: The company premises always have to be clean and dry. Timely cleaning routines have to be followed throughout the workplace to maintain a healthy atmosphere. As mentioned before, since a lot of material and even the finished drugs are highly sensitive to moisture and temperature, it is not always possible to clean the processing and storage areas with water and detergent. In such cases, technics like air cleaning have to be deployed. The point to note here is, that only cleaning of the sites is not at all sufficient. Sanitization is a very important part of the hygiene routine to make sure that there are no harmful bacteria or germs at any point of time. Although all these procedures are indispensable, they are quite expansive and add to the manufacturing cost. Because of the involvement of human labor in higher numbers, maintaining a 100% germ-free atmosphere all the time is an exhausting job.
  • Machinery and Equipment Hygiene: The machinery used in a pharmaceutical plant is as prone to catching and spreading germs as we are. Cleaning and disinfection of this equipment, therefore, becomes a critical part the hygiene routine. The equipment cleaning is usually done using steam, pressure or chemical sterilization. The age old handling equipment like conveyors and forklifts are very difficult to sterilize because of their larger size and complicated built. So, even though sufficient hygiene is maintained at the manufacturing level, contamination can occur during the handling and transfers.

From all the above discussion, we can conclude that although the companies try to keep hygiene levels of the material, equipment and workplace at the optimum, it becomes difficult to control it during the transit because of human interference. All this causes degradation of the products. Unlike in other industries, where quality degradation of products results in just dissatisfaction of consumers, in the pharmaceutical industry it can be life-threatening to the customers. While in any other industry bad products are an indication of monetary losses to the company, in pharmaceuticals they mean loss of licenses, suspension of permits, legal actions and a lot more.

It would not be an overstatement to say, that reducing the human contact can help in curbing this hygiene issue to a great extent. And who better than RAGHAV to the rescue? In our next article, we will see how RAGHAV can help to maintain hygiene to the benefit of pharmaceuticals.

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