The role of serialisation in sustainable development

As customers and consumers become increasingly aware of and concerned about climate change and economic and social inequality, they are looking for ways of influencing and effecting change. One of the ways they can achieve this is through their consumption decisions and purchasing actions, writes Glynis Stark of Adept Pharma.

Customers expect that the products they purchase and consume will have been produced in a way that not only has the lowest impact on the environment, but also positively contributes to its restoration. This expectation extends to improving the lives of the people involved in providing raw materials and ingredients and in manufacturing and distribution of the product.

One way of assessing this is through the widely accepted metric of a company’s contribution to the achievement of the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This means that manufacturers of both ingredients and finished products need to not only consider these aspects when making business decisions, but will also need to be able to demonstrate that this is the case. Brand image and history will no longer be enough.

This is where serialisation across the product supply chain can assist with developing and maintaining records as well as providing the necessary audit trail in case of queries (about quality or ingredients).

THE CONFIDENCE FACTOR

Serialisation has the ability to provide consumers with the confidence that producers are in fact doing what they claim to be doing, through the secure, detailed and accurate aggregation of information related to a product’s origin.

It has application in the manufacture, packaging and repackaging of:

• pharmaceuticals

• cosmetics

• personal care products

• complementary medicines

• health products

• food

• veterinary pharmaceuticals

• animal feed.

Adept Pharma is a Southern African company providing engineering and project services to meet serialisation needs in manufacturing industries. In addition, Adept Pharma is the regional representative of Jekson Vision.

Jekson Vision, established in 2001 in New Jersey in the US and now with offices in India, Germany, Russia and Singapore, has developed visual inspection equipment and systems which enable serialisation (trackand-trace) systems. The equipment and systems have the advantage of flexibility in that they can be added as the final stage on existing production lines, as well as offering a number of semi-automated and manual handling systems.

Jekson Vision operates a 24hour customer care desk to support its customers.

Did you know?

ESG refers to environment, social and governance. These non-financial factors are increasingly being applied by customers (and investors) in their decision-making processes.

SECURE, USER-FRIENDLY AND CONFIGURABLE

The serialisation systems can also interface with existing production and enterprise management systems at all hierarchy levels, including regulatory authority platforms. Solutions have been developed to interface with several widely-used ERP systems including SAP, Tracelink and rfXcel. Jekson Vision has the capability to develop other bespoke interfaces where necessary.

The serialisation system known as Reetrak is compliant with the global GS1 standard and can accept barcodes generated by third-party systems as well as generating its own, depending on the requirement and current system configuration. Reetrak offers a secure, user-friendly and configurable solution.

With Reetrak, manufacturers and brand owners will be optimally equipped to meet current and future market demands with respect to counterfeit protection and production.

UN SDGs applicable to manufacturing industries

• Goal 5: Gender equality

• Goal 8: Decent work and economic growth

• Goal 10: Reduced inequality

• Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities

• Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production

• Goal 13: Climate action

• Goal 14: Life below water

• Goal 15: Life on land

Source: sdgs.un.org/goals

FLEXIBLE, MODULAR SOLUTIONS

Jekson Vision, through Adept Pharma, offers a variety of serialisation machines that are fully equipped with the advanced Reetrak system. The S120, ST220, Bottle 360, Pallet 200 and ST100 are best-suited to meet the needs of the South African market in terms of their flexibility and modularity which facilitates integration into existing production lines.

The S120 is the world’s most compact serialisation machine. Despite its compact size, it can host up to four printing heads and accommodates a huge variety of carton format sizes at very high speeds.

The latest version within Jekson Vision’s ST200 series is the ST220. It is one of the most efficient tamperevident labelling machines on the market, and generates, prints and scans unique serialised numbers at item level.

To examine the top, bottom and sides of bottles, Bottle 360 is an ideal inspection system for pharmaceutical bottling lines. Its advanced features include 360° label orientation of barcodes, pharma codes and data matrix decoding as well as highly accurate optical character recognition.

For repacking and warehouse operations, Pallet200 is easily moveable and highly effective in meeting scanning, printing and labelling needs at case and pallet level.

ST 100 is Jekson Vision’s standalone module for tamper-evident label application and the positive verification of labels applied on cartons. It offers high-accuracy printing and excellent labelling quality, running at up to 250 cartons per minute. •

Adept Pharma – glynis@adeptpharma.co.za

Jekson Vision – jeksonvision.com