One of the cornerstones of an inventory management system is documentation, such as shipping manifests. Especially in the highly regulated cannabis, pharmaceutical, and biologics industries, generating accurate shipping manifests ensures robust inventory control.
Inventory systems often becomes overwhelmed. Inventory teams spend much of their time reacting to problems and backups instead of planning and managing them. While the inventory team must ensure individual batches are tracked and traced, it requires a high-level attention to detail. Mistakes can be costly and lead to rejected shipments, or worse, regulatory citations.
However, with an electronic shipping manifest system, such as the InstantGMP™ Integrated Inventory Management Software, generating accurate shipping manifests saves time, provides traceability, and complies with regulations, leading to robust inventory control.
Reduce Time
In the pharmaceutical warehouse, the rush of everyday work pressures can cause decisions to become reactive rather than proactive. Time is often wasted waiting for products to be re-worked, for approvals to be given, or for products to be released. As a result, warehouse teams can be pressured to hurry through their duties. No matter the cause, pharmaceutical warehouse teams are doubly pressured to meet production and quality goals.
Inventory teams then end up playing the waiting game, increasing costs while waiting for data to come from different departments. When handwritten records are kept, significant time and cost savings could be generated by implementing electronic systems. The InstantGMP™ shipping manifest pulls materials from inventory and provides complete traceability between the pulled materials and the shipping manifests sent out.
Electronic systems, like the Shipping Manifest Solution available with InstantGMP™ eliminate the extra steps with real-time access to data and thorough inventory history. The simple format allows team members to create an accurate shipping manifest with a few mouse clicks.
The Shipping Manifest Solution from InstantGMP™ transforms reactive inventory management into proactive inventory management. Because the system incorporates regulatory requirements, time previously wasted on documentation defects can be translated into inventory cost savings.
Provide Complete Traceability
Highly regulated product manufacturers must be able to track and trace every shipment no matter its destination. Changes to orders must be clearly identified and approved. With the Shipping Manifest Solution from InstantGMP™, changes can easily be tracked and reviewed in real time. Manifests are easily generated to accommodate last minute schedule changes. Lot numbers, quantities, and even specifications and Terms and Conditions can be added to the shipping manifest within the InstantGMP™ Inventory module.
Comply with Regulations
There is a laundry list of regulations covering biologics, pharmaceuticals, and cannabis: FDA, NIH, OSHA, DOT, & MAUCRSA to name a few. Compliance with quality controls is critical for biologic, pharma, and cannabis companies to maintain their licenses. As the old saying goes, “If it wasn’t documented, it wasn’t done,” documentation is one of the key quality control points for maintaining compliance.
A quick review of any annual FDA inspection observation list provides evidence of distribution compliance risks. Major findings include:
- Lack of adequate records covering shipment
- Distribution records do not include required information
- Records are not maintained in a way that allows distribution steps to be traced
Support your inventory management teams’ effort to comply by simplifying their job. An electronic shipping manifest, like the InstantGMP™ Shipping Manifest Solution already contains the forms and processes required. This new feature integrates solutions to ensure regulatory compliance with the inventory management module. It provides links to batch records, specifications, suppliers, and distributors, which will prevent simple mistakes that could jeopardize GxP compliance.
A thorough inventory management system includes creating accurate shipping manifests. When an inventory management system struggles to keep up with demand, the whole business suffers. Long wait times, documentation errors, and regulatory citations result when this link in the chain is broken.
Implementing the Shipping Manifest Solution available through InstantGMP™ elevates that system to the next level by seamlessly bringing the whole process together, leading to robust inventory control.
If you’d like to leave delays behind and improve compliance and traceability with InstantGMP™, contact us for a live demonstration