Perrigo, a major contract manufacturer of otc and healthcare medicines, both branded and private label, has installed a Ci-DMS dispensary management system from UK-based CI Electronics at its facility in Braunton in Devon, UK.
The OTC medicines manufactured at Perrigo Devon are primarily focused on the cough/cold market and are in both liquid and solid dose form. Ci-DMS is used to control the weighing and dispensing of pharmaceutical starter materials in three dispensing booths according to GAMP principles.
A specially configured interface links Ci-DMS to the company’s AS/400 based ERP system. This receives transactions for material lots and process orders from the ERP system and returns transactions for material movement/consumption. The interface also sends back stock adjustments to ensure that the ERP inventory is accurately maintained.
Ci-DMS is a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) system with pre-validated core software that enables fast implementation. Perrigo also chose a turnkey implementation, with CI providing IQ/OQ/PQ assistance that minimised utilisation of local resources. Features of particular benefit to Perrigo included the automated printing of the batch record and the ability to weigh multiple packs on a pallet simultaneously and uniquely label each of these packs with a dispensed label.
Perrigo production manager Kathryn Rutter particularly appreciates the ability to produce automated reports and comprehensive logs, enabling full traceability and easy auditing.
‘We were looking for a cost-effective solution with excellent performance from a company that could provide an efficient implementation and dependable after sales support,’ she said. ‘Ci-DMS from CI Systems met these criteria.’
‘The key objective was to reduce or eliminate manual errors. Since installing Ci-DMS we have reported nil errors.’
