Case Studies

Eli Lilly purchased tooling for a new product launch.  Lilly could not run their form, fill, and seal line at the required run rate during the new tooling validation.  After five months of unsuccessful attempts, Lilly’s supplier of pre-printed lidding blamed the problem on the tooling, and the tooling manufacturer blamed the problem on the supplier of the pre-printed lidding.  

After learning of True Label’s expertise in pre-printing lidding within exact registration tolerances and in an attempt to prove the tooling was within Lilly’s required specifications, the tooling fabricator reached out to True Label for help.  The tooling manufacturer sent True Label a roll of lidding material and artwork that contained a specific print repeat for the new tooling.  Within one-week, True Label hand-delivered a roll of pre-printed lidding that ran flawlessly at a rate of speed that exceeded Lilly’s requirement.  Based on that validation, True Label became the preferred vendor for all new product launches on Lilly’s form, fill, and seal lines and has since become an approved supplier of pre-printed lidding and labels for Lilly’s commercial packaging team.

Fresenius Medical Care had an automated filling and sealing line but needed a method to print unique barcodes for the lot number and expiration date.  They also needed a system to confirm the correct label was being applied to their products with the correct lot # and expiration date.  

True Label used their expertise to build an automatic print, apply, and verify label applicating system that printed bar codes for the lot and expiration numbers and then verified through the use of an independently programmed scanner that those barcodes and the product barcode for the label and manufacturing lot were all correct.

Omnicare is the United States leading supplier of prescription drugs to the long-term healthcare industry.  In 2006, Omnicare built eighteen high-speed print and apply labeling systems to apply a unique one-off prescription label to a uniquely drug-packaged blister card at a high rate of speed.  The label had a portion of the liner that was die cut to remain on the back of the label after the label was applied to the blister card.  Due to the small size of the label and the large size of the die cut in the liner, the liner was extremely unstable and was tearing during the application process, causing excessive downtime on the line.  After months of unsuccessfully working with Omnicare’s existing single-sourced vendor of prescription labels, Omnicare’s Director of Automation reached out to True Label for assistance.  Within ten days of seeing the problem, True Label delivered a roll of labels with a redesigned undercut in the liner that enabled Omnicare’s automatic label print and apply systems to apply labels without any breakages in the liner.  Based on that solution, True Label became Omnicare’s single-source vendor for all script labels printed and applied on their Automatic Label Verification (ALV) applicating lines, now operating in twenty-four facilities throughout the United States.

One of Omnicare’s requirements for their ALV applicating lines was that True Label needed to develop a system to track the sixty-plus million labels being supplied annually so if there was ever a quality issue with a label, those labels could be isolated and recalled in a timely and efficient manner from however many of the twenty-four facilities that received the defective labels.  These quality systems are required, but the hope is that they never need to be used and, if they do need to be used, that they work when required.  

Approximately five years after the successful launch of the ALV systems, True Label received notice from a facility that the portion of the liner that was die cut and supposed to remain on the label after being applied to the blister card was not coming off from the roll and was not remaining on the back of the label.  Within four hours of receiving the call, True Label’s quality team identified what stream contained the defective labels within the multiple streams of labels printed at one time.  In addition, they identified which facilities had received the defective stream of labels and recalled 100% of only the defective stream of labels, from the specific defective lot, from each of the plants that had received the labels.  Omnicare’s Vice President of Operations took time out of his day to call the President of True Label to personally thank him for being a valuable partner after learning of True Label’s ability to quickly identify and successfully remove the defective labels from Omnicare’s supply stream.