For those who can resist the not-invented-here mentality, pharmaceutical manufacturing is rife with methods and tools that can improve outcomes in food and beverage production.
Products like nutritionally enhanced water and probiotic yogurt help obscure the line that divides food and medicine. That’s a good thing, because food and pharma production is improved when the best practices from one industry are embraced by the other.
Mixing and matching between these process industries has gone on for decades. When drug makers decided hygienic upgrades were necessary for their production equipment, they turned to the 3-A sanitary standard for dairy as their model. Different operating environments and cleaning regimens led to development of the P 3-A standard for pharmaceutical production, but the example underscores the value of looking outside one’s business for transferrable tools and practices.