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What is the significance of the personnel flow and material flow in production?
Which principles governing the material flow are applied in pharmaceutical
production?
3.C.1 Material flow
Material flow refers to the interlinking of all operations relevant to sourcing, processing and
treatment, as well as the distribution of material goods within specified areas. This specifically
involves: processing, handling, transportation, testing, stopovers and storage. Material flow is the
sequence of individual manufacturing and storage steps, starting with the raw material and ending
with the finished product. In addition to economic considerations, the material flow has a particular
significance in terms of Good Manufacturing Practice.
Clear
Unambiguous
Crossing-free
Characterised by short routes
The material flow ultimately represents the manufacturing process in the building which must be
broken down into individual steps and presented in a flow diagram. Each processing step must be
assigned to a machine, and each machine assigned to a room. The rooms in the building must then
be grouped in a manner that reflects the material flow.
There are two main principles governing the material flow that will obviously be influenced by the
building structure as well as the products: these are the horizontal and vertical material flow.
A vertical material flow, implemented for the first time by Prof. Lhoest, involves the specific use of
gravity for the transportation of products. The production equipment operates at several connected
levels. Transport and production take place at different levels wherever possible. This procedure is
mainly used in solids production (see figure 3.C-2).
In addition to the two main principles of material flow described, an interlinking of facilities is
desirable from the GMP standpoint, particularly for vertical material flows but also for horizontal
material flows. The facilities are joined together using fixed connections such as pipes, tubes, coils,
etc. The product may be transported from one machine to the next via these connecting elements
without having to be transferred to intermediate containers (see figure 3.C-3).
Summary
Material and personnel flow influence GMP and the economic efficiency of an operation.
Horizontal material flow is predominantly used in the pharmaceutical industry, though examples
of vertical material flow are becoming increasingly common - particularly in the production of
solid dosage forms.
It is recommended that quality assurance is also taken into account when determining the layout.