Analyst Insight: Traditional material handling systems — wide aisles, manual pallet movements and large work-in-process (WIP) staging areas — consume valuable square footage. Automation helps reclaim that space. As pharma companies look to expand capacity and onshore manufacturing, they can benefit from an approach to material handling automation that maximizes space utilization, minimizes product touches and streamlines regulatory compliance. 

Pharmaceutical companies are making substantial  investments in the U.S., and are expected to continue doing so through 2030. As companies move forward with expansions and new construction plans, they are employing an approach to material handling automation that amplifies the value of pallet automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS). Following are three examples of how, and why, they’re doing this.

Reducing product touches. The use of pallet AS/RS in pharma manufacturing offers the capability to manage inbound materials and outbound finished product through a single, space-saving solution that supports ambient, chilled and frozen storage. Work with an automation provider that can deploy single-deep, multi-deep and even deep-lane configurations across all temperature zones. For example, single-deep aisles can be configured to support fast retrieval of inbound materials required for just-in-time manufacturing, while multi-deep configurations are employed to maximize density of finished product distribution. Solutions benefit from a highly configurable intralogistics software platform that provides inventory management with real-time visibility, enhanced traceability and automated data capture.

These core solutions can be extended to encompass processes required to ensure material and production integrity, with pallet movement executed either by automated conveyors or autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). By fully automating these processes, manufacturers can reduce product touches, minimize risks of breakage and accidents, and enhance quality control.

Enhancing quality management and compliance. Another way pharma companies are expanding their use of automation is by automating sample storage, document management and other ancillary processes. Compact, cube-based automation solutions have proven ideal for this task, eliminating the need for aisles or conveyor systems, offering highly scalable systems, and enabling configuration as a small, dedicated solution for specialized use cases.

Certain modular intralogistics software platforms offerings unify automation management within a single platform, allowing teams to coordinate, monitor, and control inbound, outbound and ancillary processes from a central dashboard, while improving visibility, simplifying issue resolution, and streamlining reporting and compliance.

Doing more with data. A business intelligence and visualization tool can support monitoring, analysis and optimization of material handling operations, with capabilities that include real-time process visualization, key performance indicator tracking and event monitoring. 3D visualization capabilities provide users with a real-time, interactive digital shadow of operations that enables monitoring of material flows, storage utilization and system performance. Customizable dashboards allow users to tailor real-time operational views and performance metrics for more effective and agile decision-making.

With the right business intelligence and visualization tool, users can manage against predefined and custom KPIs, compare performance over different periods for ongoing optimization, use elastic search to quickly access operational data, and create and export customized views and reports.

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Outlook: Integrated automation solutions deliver significant benefits to pharma companies onshoring manufacturing capacity. But those benefits can only be realized by working with an automation partner that understands the unique demands and regulatory requirements of the industry. Relevant data and expertise is needed to efficiently tailor design, installation and commissioning processes to industry requirements, as well as to each site’s density and throughput requirements.