For those thinking about the investment into manufacturing, Nutritional Industry Executive (NIE) has polled several well-established equipment manufacturers for their opinionds as to why it makes sense to own your production and how you can get up and running.

Nutrition Industry Executive (NIE): For smaller manufacturers— please explain why it’s a great idea to invest in their own equipment, technology and operations.

Steve Brunt, Pharmaceutical and Nutraceutical Sales Manager, Symetix, Walla Walla, WA: It’s a great idea to invest in equipment that creates a competitive advantage, either by improving operational efficiencies, reducing costs, or ensuring the high quality of your product. Automating product inspection, which is one of our areas of expertise, can achieve all of these advantages simultaneously. It replaces manual inspection, which reduces labor costs at the same time it improves compliance to an acceptable quality level (AQL), reduces customer returns and complaints, improves batch reporting, and is a great step toward cGMP (current good manufacturing practice) compliance.

Additionally, by validating the process, automated inspection technology can be used as a marketing tool to attract new business because it positions the nutraceutical manufacturer as progressive and “quality-minded.” 

John Panaseny, President, OYSTAR USA, Edison, NJ: The most significant benefit of smaller manufacturers having their own equipment, tech and operations is the level of control they can exert. The success that many smaller companies enjoy is based, at least in part, on the flexibility and ability to respond quickly to changing market and customer needs. This responsiveness is one of the unique benefits of being smaller and more nimble. If they outsource their production, they potentially give up an element of this advantage.

Chuck Kettler, PhD, Director, Natoli Scientific, St. Charles, MO: Equipment ownership offers the buyer the opportunity to understand equipment operations from the first day and to implement the proper operation and maintenance procedures to maximize up time. In addition, having one’s own equipment and manufacturing processes allows the small nutraceutical brand owner to determine its own fate when it comes to meeting customer expectations. Owning the operation eliminates instances where a contract provider misses its commitment to you, which impacts your customer.

Chris Hillseth, President, Chris Hillseth Enterprises, Gardena, CA: When investing in their own equipment, technology and operations, smaller manufacturers experience the important and obvious benefit of having ultimate control over the products that they produce. They are able to manage a multitude of aspects of their production—including quality, cost and availability. Having absolute ownership and knowledge of what they are delivering to their customers is a very valuable thing.

For example, if a client of a company requests a sample, that manufacturer should have the power to deliver the product exactly how the client is expecting it. When a quick response is given, and the manufacturer is able to provide multiple versions of the product, they present themselves as powerful and persuasive. Clients love the opportunity to choose between different options such as color, flavor, size, smell, touch, etc.; and being able to easily fill these requests is a great advantage to have.

Nic Michel, General Manager, U.S., Pharma Technology Inc., Piscataway, NJ: In-house production of solid dosage (tablets and capsules) provides a more commanding understanding of the process and, as a result, allows for continuous internal product optimization. By comparison, a contract manufacturer is interested in how the make the product the cheapest way possible, not necessarily how to improve it. In addition, a contract manufacturer may not necessarily pass on any savings they devised by improving process.

The flexibility of having dedicated equipment available directly, without a requirement for re-configuration or format change, also helps small manufacturers respond quickly to any changes in demand.

NIE: What are the challenges involved and how would you help assist these clients along the way?

Brunt: One of the biggest challenges involved in investing in new equipment is funding the investment. Technologies that create advantages have positive returns on investment (ROI) and offer rapid payback, but funding the project during the payback period can be challenging. Leasing offers some relief, as do options such as service programs that could improve the ROI. Becoming educated on leasing options and qualifying for leasing are important elements of many equipment purchase decisions, especially for smaller manufacturers.

Panaseny: Often, one of the challenges of being a smaller company is limited technical resources, which can prevent or delay investments in equipment, technology and operations. It is imperative that the systems and technology in which they invest be supplied by an organization that has adequate resources to support them. This includes technical support, project management, installation and commissioning, training, preventative maintenance and ongoing technical support.

Kettler: One of the biggest challenges to a new business is maintaining cash flow. When a new business has a customer that cannot pay for products or services and this places our partner in a vulnerable position we will work with them to ensure that they can keep our equipment running while minor financial glitches are addressed.

New ventures need to learn to walk before they try to run. The learning curve for new equipment is steep and additional training may be needed.

Hillseth: There is definitely a learning curve and commitment that goes along with manufacturing and operations; additionally, when manufacturing is paired with marketing, the whole system needs to function expertly and seamlessly.

Many challenges require keeping abreast of the market, seeing new avenues and securing expertise, manufacturing capacity, raw materials, technology. Most importantly, you have to recognize the things that are important to your success: plan for what you know, and prepare for what you don’t.

Michel: Setting up solid-dose manufacturing operation requires a significant investment in production equipment (blender, tablet press/capsule filler, coater … ), peripheral equipment (tablet deduster, capsule polisher, metal detector, tablet tester, vacuum loader) and product handling equipment (drums, bins, hoppers, etc.). 

NIE: Please outline specifically what you would help these clients create on-site to control their own operations.

Brunt: Last year, Symetix introduced the smallest and most affordable version of its high-performance VeriSym optical inspection system for product verification. The VeriSym SE, which is ideal for small manufacturers, was designed specifically to verify soft gels continuously, in-line after a single encapsulator. It can also be used offline in batch mode to verify soft gels and/or coated tablets.

As the smallest member of the VeriSym family, VeriSym SE inspects up to 200,000 soft gels or tablets per hour within its compact footprint. It detects product color, size, and shape and removes foreign soft gels/tablets and defects such as spots, color variations, air bubbles, and misshapen soft gels as well as broken tablets, and more from the product stream to ensure product quality while reducing labor costs.

VeriSym SE satisfies customers who want the powerful inspection capabilities of our full-capacity VeriSym, which inspects up to 1,000,000 soft gels or tablets per hour, but at the right size and capacity for encapsulation lines and smaller operations. VeriSym SE brings automated inspection to manufacturers and packers with lower-volume product runs. It reduces reliance on labor by eliminating manual inspection and by facilitating the migration from batch processing to continuous automated processing.

Unlike manual inspection, VeriSym SE is objective and consistent, which improves final product quality. Automating inspection with VeriSym SE increases product yield by minimizing the removal of acceptable product, which is common with manual inspection. The system reduces the risk of contamination by minimizing human contact with product. Based on labor savings alone, VeriSym SE offers a payback of less than 12 months. Improvements in production efficiency further speed payback.

Customers currently tray drying soft gels, or utilizing continuous drying systems and/or manufacturing coated tablets can batch-feed the VeriSym SE from totes, bins or boxes.

Designed for fast and easy product changeovers, VeriSym SE can be cleared, cleaned, and set-up to handle the next product in less than 10 minutes, with no tools required. Product settings, including accept/reject standards, can be stored in the system’s memory for quick and easy recall. The system can inspect oval, round, and oblong soft gels and coated tablets ranging in size from #2 to #40.

Panaseny: A good example of the type of equipment that OYSTAR has developed for clients with this profile is our Erca MF-7 and MF-14 form, fill and seal machine used for filling yogurt and other food products into cups. This equipment was designed to be easy to ship, install and operate through a design that considers all of these factors. The equipment ships as one part, so there is no need for any special assembly once it arrives at a plant site. Furthermore, the operator interface (or HMI) is designed to be very uncomplicated, allowing businesses that do not have experience running their own equipment to understand it. With the efficient design of the MF Series fillers, the installation time and training time are very short and ideal for smaller businesses.

The machine meets all 3-A Sanitary Standards, which promotes food safety and public health. The cost-effective machine forms and fills cups of various shapes and sizes at a maximum forming depth of 70 mm, and at a maximum output of 21,600 cups per hour.

Among the machine’s many distinctions is its striking compactness: the M-F 14 occupies up to 70 percent less floor space than comparable equipment. The machine also provides easy accessibility and an operator-friendly working height of 1050 mm (41.33 inches). Electro-pneumatic cabinets and filler are integrated into the base, and a simplified Human/Machine Interface contains only stop and start prompts. The M-F 14 uses a standard Programmable Logic Controller.

Hillseth: When building a facility, I recommend having the A-team on staff from the design stage on—make sure you have qualified design fit your specific goals, plans, permits, facilities, staff and equipment. I have been the buyer of many mistakes, overbuilds, pink elephants and second place projects. In the end, it pays to put in detailed focus right from the start, and create the best facility for your own unique needs.

Additionally, an important trend to take note of when creating a facility is the increase in specialty manufacturing. The nutrition industry has grown over the last 40 years, and one of the major areas of development has been the streamlining of plants and their processes. The number of steps in the manufacturing process is increasingly simplified as production increases. For example, a typical high-output tableting operation likes to use the term “drum to hopper,” loosely meaning that they want to only deal with the steps between the ingredient drum to tablet press hopper. As the tableting operations output increases, they tend to mix, blend, wet, granulate, dry, size, mill and grind less. Not that the ingredients are processed any less than they were before, they are simply processed outside of the tableting plant. The complexity of an ingredients plant has increased as they are doing more blending, granulation, milling, sizing, for their customers.

Michel: We specialize in vertical combined tablet dedusters and capsule polishers combined with metal detectors. We help our customers select the most appropriate tablet deduster or capsule polisher combination for their needs based on layout of their facility, capacity of their production equipment and product handling solutions.

The combined units we supply help reduce the footprint required for the equipment in the plant compared with sourcing each component separately as standalone units. It also reduces and simplifies connections: for example only one power cable is needed for a capsule polisher combined with a metal detector and empty capsule eliminator mounted on a single mobile base.

We include at least one day of onsite installation, operator and maintenance training by one of our field support specialist for every machine we supply to ensure our customers can enjoy its full potential.

Following a successful installation, we provide a list of recommended spare parts to be stocked on site in case of emergency. We also have a large stock at our New Jersey warehouse, as well as several years’ worth of inventory at our European-based factory. We then offer maintenance contracts, scheduling preventive service at regular intervals to ensure optimal availability of the equipment for production.

FORMOREINFORMATION:

■ Hillseth Enterprises, (818) 495-3038
■ Natoli Scientific, ww li.com
■ OYSTAR USA, (732) 343-7600
■ Pharma Technology Inc., (848) 202-9910
■ Symetix, (800) 941-3701