4 Ways Pharmaceutical Companies Can Use Stainless Steel Carts

In commercial-scale pharmaceutical manufacturing, there are several key factors for achieving long-term success. Two of the most important factors are being able to minimize the cost of goods (COGs) and being able to scale production to meet demand.

There are many tools that pharmaceutical manufacturers can use to improve COGs and the scalability of their processes—such as factory automation tools that eliminate human error and contamination risks. However, there’s another tool that pharmaceutical companies can use to optimize their productivity and cost of goods: Stainless steel carts.

How can pharmaceutical manufacturers use stainless steel medical carts to make processes more efficient and reduce costs? Here are a few ways that pharmaceutical companies can use stainless steel carts:

1: Using Stainless Steel Carts to Safely Move Products Quickly

One of the biggest advantages of using a medical supply cart on wheels is that it makes it easy to move many fully-loaded baskets and trays at once. Depending on the size and design of the stainless steel cart, it could hold dozens of fully-loaded baskets or trays at once.

With caster wheels on the bottom to make rolling the cart easy, a single person could quickly move large numbers of parts and/or products from one process or room in the manufacturing facility to the next with ease.

2: Using Stainless Steel Carts to Hold Parts as They Dry

Another use for stainless steel carts is to hold bottles, medical instruments, and other non-consumable products as they dry after a parts washing or sanitation process. Being able to hold a large number of trays all at once in a medical cart helps to save time—especially when the stainless steel cart has plentiful open space to let air flow through its contents.

3: Using Stainless Steel Carts for Medical Supplies

In clinical development trials, the team handling the modification and design of medical products may need a variety of tools. Using a medical supply cart on wheels makes it easy for these development team members to have the tools they need on hand when they need them.

Instead of trying to carry everything on a single tray, or moving back and forth to a supply table/cabinet, pharmaceutical workers can keep all of the tools they need neatly organized in medical utility carts with drawers and trays. This helps to reduce the time wasted searching for the right tool for the job—helping improve the productivity of the development team.

4: Using Stainless Steel Carts to Reduce Contamination Risks

Using a stainless steel medical cart with a removable cover can help to protect newly-sanitized parts from being contaminated again. With a cover, air flow to the trays and baskets loaded into the cart is restricted—preventing dust or other particulates in the air from touching the baskets and their contents.

This is incredibly useful for moving sanitary parts between processes, especially if they need to travel through areas that aren’t cleanroom-grade. Electropolishing the stainless steel cart can help to further reduce contamination risks by making carts easy to sanitize between uses.

By protecting pharmaceutical parts and products from contamination (minimizing product rejection and reprocessing of parts), stainless steel carts can help to improve productivity for pharmaceutical manufacturing. This also contributes to a lower total cost of goods by minimizing waste in the manufacturing process.

Curious about how you can use stainless steel medical carts to improve your manufacturing process? Reach out to the Marlin Steel team to learn more!