Blocking policies in pharmaceutical transfer lines

In this study, we present cases from the pharmaceutical industry involving buffers and blocking. The industry has many dedicated production lines, aseptic transfer lines (production of injectables) and robotic cells (sample preparation in laboratories). In many cases, the lines are fast (500–1000 units/minute) and they are stopped entirely when a machine fails. Also, there are many lines having medium speed which are controlled by using circular, secondary (and dynamic in size at times) buffers. Good Manufacturing Practice forces the industry to work with certain policies such as scapping upon failure as well as stopping the immediate upstream machines while clearing the buffers. We will present analytical results for some of the above scenarios.