Page 18 - CIJ May 2023 Digital Edition

Cover Story

Saurabh Jha, Sr Manager -

Administration, Lupin Pharma

Security innovation
In pharma, cross-contamination is a major issue.
Thousands of people come to the facility every day, As far as possible,
potentially bringing contaminants with them, even we should use
into the clean room, which is just not permissible. green cleaning
Each person needed to be frisked at the entry point. chemicals
But during the pandemic, we wanted to avoid close for the removal of
physical contact. micro and non-micro
We worked with a manufacturer to develop dirt. Anything that
a special hand-held metal detector that security will not harm the
personnel can use to detect cigarettes or gutkha
pouches on a person, without having to make environment is
physical contact. The device sends out a different good for us.
sound when each is detected -- a more graceful
method of frisking. With this, we have also been
able to scale down our security headcount, thus also
saving on spends.
With the innovations we have introduced, we
have been able to save on almost 10% of our annual
budget.

Less manpower, more tech conducted the experiment, found it effective and
circulated it to our industry colleagues for trial at
Many service providers are providing us with their own facilities. They replicated it to test its
the option of upgrading from manual/conventional efficacy.
machines to AI-driven machines that enable When it comes to choosing cleaning equipment,
contactless cleaning. we take a lot of support from our service partners,
However, there are some obstacles in the way of follow updates for new solutions from the industry,
adopting robotics. as well as remain in touch with our FM counterparts
Manufacturers of such machines need to take from other pharma companies.
the unique dynamics of a pharma manufacturing Initially, service providers used to procure
facility into consideration. Programmable machines cleaning machines; now, we have started
are supposed to simplify cleaning, but in pharma, buying our own. We are open to both
this programme/schedule changes every other hour. options.
For example, unscheduled extensive cleaning may
suddenly be required; it may have been scheduled for Digital initiatives
later but is suddenly required immediately. Or just
a part of the area may need to be cleaned. For this Over the last two years, we have focused
reason, pre-programming isn’t always successful in on digitalisation. With limited resources, we
the pharma industry. developed in-house software applications for
various services like issuance of taxis, data
cards etc, canteen coupon requests, visitor
Cleaning validation management, tracking of buses and more.

We felt a need to improve this, and conducted a We have graduated from hard copies to soft
trial of our own. We explored options ourselves, copies, and an app-based approval process.

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