Saturday, November 5, 2016

Why There Is A Need To Standardize Tablet Punches And Dies

By Carl Lewis


Pharmaceutical companies are a large industry that manufacture so many things. They make mostly medicines, among many other things, and they can come in various forms. From tablets to capsules and syrups, these things require some sort of equipment to make. The machinery and apparatus used for this also have standards to follow for making sure that the quantities of substances are at a proper amount.

Having only a few manufacturers make it safer for consumers to know what to buy, since having too many options may raise the possibility of side effects. These medicines have a standard to follow, but the machines that make them do not. At the consumer perspective it may not make as much sense to address something as trivial as tablet punches and dies.

There has been a call to have similar metrics and specifications for all the machines that are being utilized everywhere. If you are the type that take tablets as form of supplement and medication you would be able to tell that they come in different shapes and sizes. Certain ingredients, apart from the powdered concoction of medicine is mixed with fillers and solidifying substances.

Back then there was a manual way to produce these things. They may even be used for candy and other things that are in tablet form. Machinery called tablet compression tools are needed to do press the tablets and reduce the powder into something that can be taken in with a particular dosage. Two famous standards are used for this namely the Euro ISO and Tablet Specification Manual or the TSM.

These are the European ISO, used in Europe and mostly outside the US and the Tablet Specification Manual standards used by mostly North American Manufacturing. This is a big deal for manufacturers that have plants around the world. Not having a set of the same metrics to follow mean extra expenses. Resources are expended to qualify the product and equipment for it to be allowable in that certain location.

Procurement, maintenance and operation would also be easier for contractor or OEM staff since extra knowledge needed for machine specifications is avoided. This also saves companies from replacement and other fixes since parts for the machine would be easily found. The EOMs who make these parts would also be able to deliver their product faster.

Procurement and maintenance of machinery and part become cheaper for both the pharmaceutical manufacturer and the OEM. This is the benefit of cross compatibility of between equipment parts. The same machinery can now be used in one plant and transported to another without compromising the qualification of the product in the market.

Back in the 1990s there was very little interest in the topic of standardization tablet compression machinery. The companies probably did not want to risk losing their own unique advantages against competition. But eventually the Euro ISO ended up being one of the most widely used one in the industry.

As emphasized the differences may be very little but, these can already affect so much in the operations. Really, punches and dies just vary in specs like punch length and rotation. Having these things all the same from one equipment to another can save so much hassle in time and energy involved in production.




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