Laboratoires Lehning, a French supplier of homeopathic and herbal medicinal products, has opted for the ZetesAtlas identification solution to fulfil the traceability requirements of the new Falsified Medicines Directive.
Founded in 1935, Laboratoires Lehning processes 35 tonnes of fresh plants into products in various dosage forms every year: granules, tablets or liquids. Transformed into active ingredients, they are used in a wide range of natural health products for consumers (medicines, food supplements, cosmetics, etc.), which are sold in pharmacies, drugstores, health food shops and supermarkets.
Regulations for herbal medicine
The liquid products are filled into bottles. For them, the company had to recently underwent major changes due to the new traceability regulations. to carry out. As part of the new Falsified Medicines Directivewhich now applies to herbal medical products, Laboratoires Lehning must affix a tamper-proof label to the product packaging. For this purpose, the company turned to Zetes as a specialist in traceability and process optimisation solutions.
The implemented solution includes the ZetesAtlas PES (Packaging Execution System) With the MD-9000 automatic labelling system, the Zetes solution enables 100 percent of bottles in numerous formats to be labelled with tamper-proof labels.
"Thanks to ZetesAtlas, we have been able to centralise all our production requirements: labelling with legal notices on our packaging and applying tamper-evident labels, which has proven to be indispensable." Virginie PietrowskiProduction Manager at Laboratoires Lehning.
An additional manual solution would have been too complicated given the production volume. The company therefore decided to replace the old systems with a new machine. It can handle all packaging with both legal information (batch number, expiry date and data matrix) as well as tamper-proof labels. to apply. "Thanks to this modernisation, we now comply with the new regulations."
Tamper-proof labels thanks to ZetesAtlas
The ZetesAtlas software has made it possible to fulfil complex packaging and traceability standards for all bottles - in sizes from 30 to 250 ml. In combination with the MD-9000 automatic system the Laboratoires Lehning software enables the labelling to be printed using inkjet printing and tamper-proof labels to be applied. The open, non-proprietary architecture allows Quick, easy identification of all products directly in the packaging line. This will enable Laboratoires Lehning to serialise and aggregate the herbal medical products. And thanks to its human-machine interface, ZetesAtlas will be able to control the configuration of all machines in the entire packaging line.
All operators and technicians responsible for maintenance were trained at Laboratoires Lehning. Zetes installed the system and trained the teams. "In just a few days, our teams managed to programme the MD-9000 machine completely independently. ZetesAtlas is also very intuitive. So we were already able to develop new programmes at an early stage to personalise our labels. And easily create new print templates for the various products to be identified (bottle sizes, fonts, layout, etc.)," says Virginie Pietrowski.
Scalable system with serialisation in mind
According to Guillaume Vicot, Country Manager at Zetes France, "the ZetesAtlas solution has another advantage: the system's many upgrade options. Laboratoires Lehning also supplies Russia, among other countries. The company will therefore soon be confronted with new requirements, for example with the serialisation requirement for herbal medical devices. This option is proving to be extremely advantageous for the Group. It has therefore already prepared itself for the changes resulting from this future regulation."
Virginie Pietrowski is satisfied: "Since we started working with ZetesAtlas, we have increased our performance in our production and packaging line. The improvement is significant: our Breakdown rate has fallen from 19 to less than 3 per cent in just two months."
Source: Zetes
