CODIFICATION,STORAGE AND DISPENSING

Storage And Dispensing 

Dear Friends,

For a change let me start today's article with an anecdote.
One fine day morning around 9 O'Clock
A GM of a pharma company called his office from his mobile.
The phone bell in HR department rang.
The H.R.Executive on duty lifted the phone wished Good Morning, he understood
It was the voice of his GM at the other end.

Wishing  back, the GM said,
"I am on the way to office, pls ask Mr Ramesh to come to my cabin for an important discussion.

The HR executive in a flow said ok and kept the receiver back.
Soon he realized that he forgot to ask which Ramesh was meant by.

Ramesh, Suresh are some of the very common names in South India in fact,
There were four people by name Ramesh in various departments in the same premises
One in packing, one in QC and two in production
So he called back to get to know whom to be called for and he was made to understand that it was Ramesh of the production department.

It is just then incidentally a production operator by name Ramesh came to HR and asked for permission to meet the GM  stating some reason.
correlating  the phone call instructions to this the HR executive ascertained it is this Ramesh who is called for and asked him to wait outside his cabin.
The GM reached the office and to his surprise, he saw the operator Ramesh over there, instead of the other, however he attended his query and asked him to tell HR on his way back to inform Executive Ramesh to meet him urgently,
It's then the HR executive understood that a mistake had happened .

This is obviously a mistake based on lack of clarity in receiving  communication and assumption and judgements made by the human mind at times in accordance with the situation happening around.

This also indicates that names are so common for a many, and referring by names is a vague reference to make the information or action complete.

Well, I stop the story here and come to today's subject

Dear friends just tell me why not? The same cannot happen inside the RM stores during a dispensing where a large number of materials are called for dispensing out of hundreds of materials stored.

When going by names is so vague, for a human resources people, understand the plight of the storekeeper of any
pharma company who needs to handle hundreds of such materials in possession with him, more especially all being inanimate to apply any sense by itself. 

So it is quite imperative that there should be a system and practice in place to deal with distorted communication, and lack of clarity in understanding,to avoid happening of any unpleasant things owing system not in place.

Let us see three tips which are to be a part of the systems and SOP, to be followed in connection with handling retrieving, and dispensing the right materials at right quantities as per the document issued or request tendered.

1. Follow LASA 

Any Lookalike or Sound-alike chemicals in the warehouse should be stored at different locations inside the raw material stores and not in an adjacent position as this would trick our eyes to take for dispensing the material that is not intended at that point of time for dispensing.

2.Material Coding
Every pharma company have dedicated coding for each material but still, all these codings are followed only for making entries in the systems for documentation and seldom practised for the handling of the materials.
a.Coding with digits
We all know the numbers are infinite and can be assigned as a dedicated code for each material as many as required, and
instructions to the work man to bring any material for dispensing  is to be given In Numerics or alpha Numerics only. In any case there should be no repetition of the same number. 

For instance, if a material by name Sodium Methyl Paraben located in a particular place and it is assigned item code of 75.

And if a chemist and workman were  asked to bring that material by giving the chemist its full chemical name  and the worker who is not equally qualified as of the chemist with just   that numeric code 75 
It is for sure that the unqualified person can easily spot out and bring the right material with ease and speed with his basic  literacy than a qualified  person who search by a long chemical name.

Advantages of Numeric coding:

1 Even a layman or a novice employed on  that day as a workman would be obviously conversant with numbers as digits and hence would be able to fulfill the requirement of spotting the right material with ease  which would be a difficult task otherwise to go by reading a long chemical names.

2.Under the unavoidable conditions some  LASA materials needs to be stored adjacent to each other due to  lack of space inside a chiller units to meet the storage temperature requirements, even in such conditions the right material can be identified and brought for dispensing by.adopting this simple numeric coding system.

3.Speed and ease of material retrieval.

Tall Man lettering uses a combination of lower and upper case letters to highlight the differences between look-alike medicine names.

Not just Sound-alike or Lookalike materials , but also same materials of different grade would be available in the store's storage area which is also to meticulously read before taking for dispensing for eg.

M.C.C. ph101           M.C.C Ph 102
Lactose DT:              Lactose Anhydrous
Cross Povidone XL: crospovidone XL 10
Zinc sulphate Monohydrate 

Zinc sulphate heptahydrate.
Lemon Flavour and Lemon Grass oil
Etc.
Even dispensing the other grade of the same material would not only change the process parameters but also  have a great impact on the final quality of the product in terms of dissolution., disintegration etc. 

Conclusion :

Any computer be it a desk top or main frame invariably perform multi tasking operations only using binary codes known as machine language.

Any the internet data or the blog you read now are only processed using HTML codes, so coding is the universal understanding.

Coming into pharma parlance again the coding of each material and performing every activity based on coding is always advised to ensure the systems are fool proof.

LASA or SALADs material is to be stored at different locations separated from each other and taken for dispensing.

Alloting Numeric or Alpha numeric Codes to each material without repetition of same number.

Instructing people who handle the materials to bring materials by giving its Numeric codes.

These are quite imperative to perform error free work.

Let us practice adopting the above system and ensure safety and quality of the products produced and serve for the cause of humanity.

See you all on a another topic,

Till then

Cheers

Srikanth Santhanaraman