Automation of a paper-based waste tracking system

The pharmaceutical supply chain is typically viewed from the position of raw materials, production, transportation and distribution right through to administration to a patient. Due to the nature of the product being produced waste management and the disposal of waste product is of upmost importance and highly regulated. The demand for tracking, tracing and monitoring of produce has elevated as regulation and environmental awareness has come to the fore. A standard procedure for managing waste at pharmaceutical companies as with many other industries is to use paper based systems occasionally augmented with a rudimentary transactional (OLTP) database system. Such systems are often cumbersome and time consuming requiring significant effort and time from skilled staff. Several other industries that operate under similar conditions have been quick to adopt track and trace sensor technologies. The spread of technologies such as RFID has given rise to the Internet of Things (IoT) with systems linking digital information, to real world physical items. In this sphere, the Internet connects with business processes through this network of connected objects. Given the potentially vast amount of data stream from such waste systems. IoT systems demonstrate potential to automate the waste tracking task providing faster and more reliable data. Such data may then be examined and datamining techniques applied to extract interesting patterns and provide for process improvement in utilizing business intelligence. This research describes the automation of paper tracking system using RFID, IoT and cloud technologies in a pharmaceutical company to record the waste created and track its progress through the plant to its loading on a transport container for shipment to an incinerator.