Why “universal” OSD weight sorting is becoming a strategic requirement, not a nice-to-have. Pharma has a long history of learning the hard way that complexity is a quality risk. Every additional component you introduce into a changeover, every extra chute, bowl, guide, track, gate, insert, or format kit, creates more opportunities for:
- residue carryover
- parts mix-ups
- undetected damage / wear
- incomplete cleaning verification
- documentation gaps
- line-clearance failures
The industry often treats “change parts” as an operational detail. Regulators don’t. They treat them as product-contact surfaces and potential contamination vectors, and they expect you to control them with the same discipline you apply to the machine itself. That’s why the idea of a weight sorter that can handle almost all tablet and capsule formats with no dedicated format parts isn’t a “nice usability feature”. It’s a way to design out risk and it aligns directly with the direction GMP has been moving for the last decade.
