Hands-On, Proven Results

Video transcript: I'm Mike Hale, Senior Director of Manufacturing at Alkerme's out of Wilmington, Ohio. Yeah, so it really, it's a great opportunity for the team to be able to train out here and adapt to Alkerme's changing portfolio. So as we move forward into the future and our Orexin agonist portfolio is really focusing more on oral solid dose than the sterile manufacturing. So we're already experts in steriles manufacturing and we do have a small contingent of folks working on oral solid dose and we wanted to get some really good cross functional training with our qa, our engineering, manufacturing and support functions all together to get the same level of acumen to be able to adapt to our expanding oral solid dose portfolio. So the experience has been fantastic. TechCeuticals definitely has something very unique here and that's a combination of the diverse equipment availability. There's a bunch of folks that make oral solid dose manufacturing equipment throughout industry and Techceuticals has really good relationships with many of them and even had them on site here during our training. Of course they're going to show us on their equipment, but none of them had a bias specifically towards their own equipment. They were really open and showing us the variety of technologies that are available to us and the fundamentals and the base concepts that are required to make a good tablet, regardless of the technology that's used. The biggest thing that I took away from the courses here and all of the instructors that really, really impressed me was their focus on product quality and process quality and building that in to how you manufacture your oral solid dose products. Materials, especially when you're developing medicines, are very scarce. There's not a lot of that time or material on hand in order to make those key batches for your clinical supply especially. And so product quality is paramount in order to be able to make that medicine right the first time. Getting training from folks like we've gotten here at TechCeuticals is key. Focusing on the upkeep and maintenance and care of the equipment to make sure that when we need to use it, it's able to be used and able to put out a quality product.

Video transcript: Brian Johnson I'm Technical and compliance manager at LifePlus in Batesville, Arkansas. We are striving to improve our processes and move into more modern equipment in our coding department at LifePlus, so I came here to gain the knowledge needed to help that transition. The hands on part of the class is great. You really get a feeling for the equipment and there's experts there helping you so that you don't mess it up and you think that you can do it when you get home. Absolutely. Anyone who is beginning their spray coating journey, or even people moderately knowledgeable of the subject stand to learn a great deal attending this class.

Video transcript: Alright. William Ackley, Process Engineer I took the class to get more insight into the tablet coding process and fill any gaps in the knowledge that I already have. Highlights for me were the opportunities to be able to work with the instructors and the equipment manufacturers on the equipment in the class and to be able to get immediate feedback while doing setups and applying learnings from the class. Yes, I would recommend this class to be able to get that hands on experience and expertise of people who have worked in the industry.

Video transcript: My name is Anna Curran and I'm a scientist at a nutraceutical manufacturing plant. I wanted to learn more about film coding because part of my job is going out into the factory and troubleshooting, and I think that learning more about the ideal process parameters and setup procedures will help me to prevent issues before they start. I think just learning in general and I really enjoyed the hands on portion because I've never actually gotten the opportunity to touch a coding mach, so I really like that.

Video transcript: I'm Alex. I'm a production engineer at a pharmaceutical company. I took this class because I recently took my position and I came from a different industry. So it's, it's been, you know, there's learning on the job, but then what I really liked about this is with the demo sized equipment and the fact that we're doing all these activities without active ingredients, you can really get more hands on than you normally can day to day on the job. You can open up, stop the process and open up the vessel and look inside and feel it and you know, it really helps all the concepts and all the theory helps it click and stick a lot better. So it's been really great. Yeah, so if I had a coworker who was wondering whether they should take this or not, I would definitely recommend it. It's good experience for, you get the hands on experience with all the demos and the people teaching the class, have a ton of experience with their specific subject matter and have been able to answer every question I've had or my classmates have had and it's been really informative in a really short time period, so it's been really good.

Video transcript: My name is Craig Belknap and I am currently a supervisor for Hikma Pharmaceuticals for dry gran and wet gran. And I have previous experience working with the compression, encapsulation and coating areas. Not knowing too much about the wet gran process, I came here to learn about the fluid bed process so I could be able to better assist my operators when having experiences. I can help. I know what helps me to find out what kind of questions to be able to ask to get to get them to come to resolution to some problems we may be having and help out some of the newer operators that we have on site. Actually learning a lot of the fluid bed processes and definitely sparking some understanding of some of the stuff I've already seen at work. Kind of bringing to light some of the stuff I've seen at work and why don't we better understand that? So that's kind of especially the whole fluid bed process. It's kind of really interesting. It's better. It's nice actually watching the whole process and getting that explained to me as I'm watching it instead of trying to figure it out on my own. Oh yes, most definitely. Because like there's a lot of good information. I know there was some stuff that might have been a little bit higher to my training, but all very broken down, nice and simple and easy to understand. And I definitely am walking away understanding the process a whole lot better than when I did came when I came in.

Video transcript: Hi, my name is Eric Peterson. I work for Hickman Pharmaceuticals in Columbus, Ohio. I'm a supervisor over our dry granulation coating and beta press compression area. Basically, I'm here just to have a better understanding of the granulation process in regards to how the API and incipients work together to go through the whole process of drying just to kind of fine tune those skill sets. Obviously, just a deep dive. The hands on experience, very, very beneficial. Just getting to know the process from the inside out. Sure. Yeah, definitely. I'm looking forward to, you know, maybe attending some other classes here at this place. I would recommend a colleague to come here just because of the hands on experience they provide and also just for, you know, just the in depth training with the instructors and the ability to connect and answer questions asked.

Video transcript: My name is Oscar Batista. I'm a lead tech at Adare Pharmaceutical and I've been there for 25 years. This was more like a refreshing course because we're starting to get more formulations. CDMOs that are bringing granulation stuff and top spray stuff. Just wanted to refresh since we've been working with that very long. Just the highlights will say hands on is always the best thing. And getting experience from comments from other people in the class. It's always a good experience and learning you can meet other people and make connections with other people.

Video transcript: Hi, my name is Rigveda Janai. I work at Reckitt in Salt Lake City as a process engineer. We work with soft gels, tablets, capsules, granulation. I came here to learn a little bit more about granulation. We do lots of granulation on site, and it's a pretty complicated process. So to understand the basics, scaling up and all the different variables that go into it, and do some experiments at the benchtop scale to understand more. I really enjoy all the instructors and especially the practical part about it and how there's a lot more questions that arise when you run the equipment and work on it directly. So that was really great. Absolutely. I think that everyone would benefit learning from, especially if you do work on these processes. And it is a really good it's really nicely structured where you do the theory and then you also do it in practical. So.

Video transcript: My name is Teddy Hagos. I work for ProBody Warehouse and I'm in charge of machine assembling and product formulation and making sure the product is in the machine without any hassle or problems. So, I'm here because I wanted to expand my knowledge and learn a few things that I can implement in the business to help us with production and just not kill as much time and find ways to not waste product and techniques on machines or even formulation if we needed any help. I'm a really hands-on person, so seeing everything visually and working on it visually really helped a lot. Also, the informative side. As far as capsules, I did not know there was different types of capsules, so it really opened my eyes and made me realize there's more than just sizes when it comes to capsules.

Video transcript: My name is Robert Harlow. I'm the first shift production group lead at Blueroot Health. My production background at work is mostly in powders and blending. I have a little encapsulation experience with the intermittent dosing machines. But we do have two tamping machines and I would like to learn how they work so I can also assist any operators, and just to understand how it works. I didn't even know they had continuous motions machines. That was something I didn't even know existed until I got here. And it was very interesting to see how, compared to the other ones, how very few tooling is needed and just to meet other people and, you know, learn how different people handle things and solve problems is great.

Video transcript: Hey, my name is Jessica, and I work as a formulations associate for Swanson Health Products. Well, I wanted some more advanced training for the 705 machines that we run in our R&D facility. And then that also translates really well into the 1505 machines that we run in manufacturing production. I really enjoyed meeting Jason from Syntegon. He had personalized knowledge about the 705 machines and also, Jesus, he gave us some very good insights as to how to make the products run better through the machine and how to resolve some issues we might have been having.

Video transcript: My name is Richard. I work at Granules. I'm a process equipment engineer in Granules. Just to learn more, like techniques, some knowledge. Because I know working on the machines, troubleshooting is never ending. So it's always best, you know, to see knowledgeable instructors. And we made it. We did it the last day and everything is, I feel happy. I learn a lot. My favorite topic is like when it comes to troubleshooting, which is that's the best important I have troubleshooting.

Video transcript: So my name is Priyanka Richy, and currently I'm working as an operator for Granules Pharmaceuticals Chantilly. So, I was pretty new to encapsulation, and I wanted to learn deeper, like, more deeper knowledge I wanted to have in regards with the encapsulation process and the equipment. That's why I'm here in Cleveland. So, honestly, the greatest thing I have learned by being here is sometimes it's better not to struggle alone and learn from others, too. So it was a great experience to be here, and I learned a lot.

Video transcript: I'm Eliuth. I'm working in NutraStar as an engineer. Right now, we're trying to improve our process where we're working. So, coming to this course was incredible because we had the opportunity to see what a professional does and have those little tips that probably, oh well, they will save a lot of time in the things that we do. So, yeah, it was an incredible experience. I'm so glad to be one of the ones that came over here to receive this knowledge. And yeah, it's awesome when you have that opportunity to be side by side with the ones that know more than you.

Video transcript: I'm Jaden Tolliver and I work at UPM Pharmaceuticals. I'm an operation equipment specialist. I came here to learn and advance my skills in encapsulation and just learn the equipment and more about how to troubleshoot it. I really enjoyed the hands-on learning and group discussion to learn about other people's questions and problems they've had with encapsulation and just learn from that.

Video transcript: My name is Greg James. I'm the production manager at Vitabulk, Inc. in Watsonville, California. So, we're a very small company, so I do everything from running machinery, occasionally I help out in packaging, I do a lot of our extracting of herbs and combinations of herbs that we sell, and I will be working on our coating machine for our tablets. I took this class because I know nothing about coating, and we're going to start coating our tablets. We're growing, and that's the next logical step. Everything was kind of a highlight because it's all fairly new information for me. I mean, I understood an overview of how things worked, but I had no real information on how things went. So the whole thing was kind of a hike. Wait for me. I learned a lot through the whole process, and none of it was boring or information I didn't need either.

Video transcript: My name is Luz Osbon and I'm the Product Development Manager for an animal health company. I took this class to learn more about powder flow, powder flowability . And then there's the extra learnings that come from what else can you do with the powders: encapsulation, tablet making, etc. My favorite part was learning about the tablet making. That's something that I had never dived deep into before, but I feel much more informed after this course.

Video transcript: Mi nombre es Juan Lara, trabajo en Ocenco y soy operador de tabletas. La razón por la que venimos a la clase es para mejorar el procedimiento por el cual hacemos las tabletas y dar una mejor calidad de producto. La parte interesante es el saber cómo manejar mejor el material para que pueda compactar mejor y hacer mejor las tabletas.

Video transcript: Hi, my name is Connor Harn. I'm a chemical engineer with Ocenco. I'm primarily involved with research and development. I took this class because I had a little bit of knowledge about tablet making, but I wanted to gain some more knowledge and just really wanted to improve the overall quality of the tablets that we make in-house. I really liked the hands-on experience. Like we got to actually operate the machines and, yeah, that was my favorite part.

Video transcript: I took this class so that I could be much more comfortable and confident working on the 705 Syntegon encapsulator and make that machine work as smoothly as possible for my producers. I have a couple favorite parts about taking this class. The first one is the hands-on experience with the machine and getting to work with one that's brand new and actually see how everything should work ideally. Another favorite part that has nothing to do with being a maintenance tech was learning about the importance of powder formulation and how that can affect the functioning of an encapsulator. So, it was very interesting to learn a completely different perspective of the overall process.

Video transcript: Oh, the class is great. So the facility is very professional. You know, we're very equipped, you know, very kind of, like, comfortable. And so the class is great. So, Jesus he's really good lecturer and the class, well organized, good slides, supporting material. And most important, we got hands.-on Hands-on . So that's most important and most kind of like, probably, like, interesting part of that training. I feel that I need more and more training and more. But that's the next step. No, it is great. Just great experience. And, you know, we're going back today, you know, you know, use what we, you know, what we learned, what we, you know, we can put hands-on , and we come back for the next training, probably. Thank you.

Video transcript: La verdad que quiero aprender lo que es cómo usar nuevas máquinas, cómo funcionan. La parte favorita creo que sería en totalidad todo, porque todo me es nuevo. Y pues lo más importante, querer aprender y dar mejores resultados. La verdad sí, porque sería primera vez trabajando con ciertas máquinas o aprendiendo cómo trabajar con ellas y es algo que en verdad me va a ayudar lo que es en un futuro.

Video transcript: Hi, I'm Kasey Chesnutt with Scott Laboratories. I and my team have attended three courses offered by Techceuticals, the tableting basics, advanced coating, and advanced granulation. Taking these courses back-to-back has brought us up to speed with the current state-of-the-art in tablet manufacturing. In just a few months, we left each course with theoretical and hands-on knowledge of all of the concepts and processes needed to create high quality tablets, coatings, and granulations. Jesus, the instructor is wonderfully eager to share what he's learned from decades in the industry, from core processes to case specific tips and tricks. The insights provided by Jesus, his team, and wealth of guest speakers from the industry gave us the ability to go back to our project with immediately actionable knowledge. Techceuticals strives to ensure everyone in class understands the course material thoroughly. The skills and tacit understandings we've obtained has been immensely valuable and would have taken us so much longer if we tried to piece it all together ourselves. Thank you, Techceuticals.