A tablet maker moves powder through blending, granulation, compression, coating and strip or bottle packing. Its people issues are machine set-up skill, changeovers between products and checks that must never be skipped on a fast line.
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Share your requirementsA tablet manufacturer takes powders and excipients through dispensing, blending, granulation, drying, compression, coating and packing. Each room has its own machines and people, and a product moves from one to the next under a batch record. Compression machines turn out tablets at speed, and operators check weight, hardness and thickness at set intervals. Coating and polishing follow, then blistering, stripping or bottling lines, where many workers pack and inspect. Orders come from the company's own brands or from marketing partners, and run to a plan with product changes during the week. A changeover means complete cleaning and a line check. The people who set up and tune compression machines are the hardest to find and keep. See also HR for pharmaceuticals and life sciences.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
Tuning a machine for weight and hardness takes years of feel, and few operators can do it without help.
Cleaning and line clearance must be complete, and a rush under a planning squeeze risks a mix-up.
Operators on target feel the pressure to keep running, and a missed weight check shows up later as a rejected batch.
Strip and blister packing absorbs daily wage workers who learn by watching, and errors in count or coding follow.
The technician who knows the punches and dies for each product has no written record or understudy.
Production officers are asked to run, check and report, and the line between their job and quality's is blurred.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Learning and Development; Onboarding and Probation; Employee Administration. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for pharmaceuticals and life sciences, not in general.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a tablet manufacturers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A ladder from feeder to operator to setter with sign-off on each product family.
What this coversHideA ladder from feeder to operator to setter with sign-off on each product family. The competency and talent management work sets the framework.
A written clearance by the operator and a second person at each changeover, and a record kept by shift.
What this coversHideA written clearance by the operator and a second person at each changeover, and a record kept by shift. The HR documentation process helps maintain it.
Production plans carry time for in-process checks, and supervisors are measured on checks done as well as output.
What this coversHideProduction plans carry time for in-process checks, and supervisors are measured on checks done as well as output.
A short classroom and buddy period before a new packer works a line alone, using the employee onboarding process.
What this coversHideA short classroom and buddy period before a new packer works a line alone, using the employee onboarding process.
Keep a tooling register by product, and have a second technician learn each set of punches and dies from the first.
What this coversHideKeep a tooling register by product, and have a second technician learn each set of punches and dies from the first.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A skill ladder for compression, coating and packing operators.
A trained start for packing line workers before they work alone.
Clear records of roles, training and sign-off that stand up when asked.
Building setters from operators, with a named trainer and sign-off.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in pharmaceuticals and life sciences, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why people leave pharma and life sciences roles, and how to ask about qualification, shifts, territory and quality culture in an exit conversation.
7 min readRead article
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
7 min readRead article
A practical joining checklist covering documents, assets, system access and statutory enrolments, with owners and timings, so nobody's first salary is wrong.
8 min readRead article
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Pick operators with feel and patience, pair them with a senior and sign off by product family. Reward the skill with a distinct grade.
Build the check time into the plan and track it as a measure, not just output. Supervisors should see the log each shift.
Give a short classroom session, a buddy and a first week on simple tasks. Record the training before they work alone.
Use a written clearance with two signatures and make time for it in the plan. Review any miss without blame.
Recognise the skill, give an understudy and review pay against the market. Write down what they know.
We would count your compression setters, check recent changeover records and look at who knows your tooling. A good first piece of work is a set-up skill ladder and a packer training plan. Scope is then agreed in writing.
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