Updating Palletization To Increase Product Safety

By Rex Lowe, President, iGPS

Some pharmaceutical companies have already moved to streamline and upgrade their supply and manufacturing chains. However, the process all too often still operates as follows:

• Ingredients/materials/packaging from suppliers are shipped into a production facility on wood pallets
• The goods are removed from the pallets to enter the manufacturing process, often being placed on plastic or metal pallets as they become packaged products
• The packaged products are then loaded back onto wood pallets
• The wood pallets are shipped out, never to be seen again

The awkwardness of this process seems obvious. Changing from wood to plastic or metal back to wood adds time, labor, and expense. Plus, the manufacturer has to invest in two separate assets: wood pallets and plastic or metal pallets. One asset — the one-way wood pallets the finished products ship on — is an unrecoverable expense with questionable utility. Current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) states that the use of wood — especially chemically treated wood — should be minimized or eliminated inside a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility.