Recipharm has equipped its sixth facility with serialization capabilities ahead of the U.S. and European regulation enforcement deadlines.

The facility in Lisbon is the latest of Recipharm’s facilities to be prepared to start supplying serialized products to the U.S. and Europe, following a €40 million investment into its company-wide implementation program in 2016.

Recipharm has delivered over 1.3 million serialized and aggregated packs to markets such as, China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkey where serialization regulations are currently in place. The Lisbon site is the sixth to become serialization-ready for the U.S. and European markets and adds an additional four packaging lines to the company’s current serialization capabilities. This will be followed by a further seven lines at the facility by Q2 in 2018.

“Recipharm recognized the complexity of implementing serialization at a very early stage and so we’ve been preparing for the new regulations in the U.S. and Europe for a long time now,” said Staffan Widengren, director of corporate projects, Recipharm and head of the global steering committee for Recipharm’s serialization project. “The Lisbon facility brings us to over a third of the way through our implementation project and is an important milestone in our journey.”

Effective serialization capabilities can eventually help companies to improve their overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and streamline their operations. “The program also helps us to ensure that serialization data integrates with our enterprise resource planning (ERP) activity and our manufacturing execution systems (MES) so that we can achieve wider business benefits beyond compliance,” said Mr. Widengren.

The central team is responsible for identifying, ordering, installing and qualifying serialization systems in line with customer requirements. The next site to be equipped will be the company’s facility in Brescia, which will supply serialized product to the U.S.  

Recipharm’s serialization program was recently recognized in the TRACKTS Awards 2017 as an example of best practice for its execution of a track and trace system at the Lisbon facility following a detailed assessment of the project’s methodology, use of technology and innovation.