Summary: This document describes the process of manufacturing dietary supplements at Columbia Nutritional, emphasizing the importance of collaboration. The steps involved in the process include staging/picking, weighing, blending, encapsulation/tableting, packaging, and warehouse operations. The quality team plays a crucial role in ensuring that the ingredients are correctly selected, the weighing is accurate, the blend is homogeneous, and the finished products meet quality standards. The packaging phase offers customization options to meet customer specifications, and the warehouse operations focus on maintaining inventory integrity and accuracy.
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Several steps take place to physically make a dietary supplement. The process involves collaboration across the organization to ensure that brand holders and consumers get a high-quality supplement that is safe and efficacious. At Columbia Nutritional, we manufacture capsules, tablets, and powders. Before batch paperwork is released to manufacturing, it is reviewed by the quality team against the master manufacturing record (MMR) to ensure consistent production runs from batch to batch. Once quality releases the batch to production, it moves to the picking/staging phase.
Staging/Picking- The bill of materials, for each batch is used by the operations team to stage the ingredients for weighing. The ingredients listed on the bill of materials have all undergone Columbia’s rigorous quality processes and have been released from quarantine. Once the operations team has staged the ingredients outside of weighing, the quality team is then called to check the ingredients against the bill of materials to ensure that the ingredients were correctly selected per the bill of materials.
Weighing – Before beginning the process, quality control inspects the weigh room to ensure it has been thoroughly cleaned and sanitized. Various locations are swabbed with ATP swabs to confirm cleanliness. After the room is released for use, our skilled employees weigh the ingredients carefully to ensure the correct amounts are added to the vitamin blend. There are always at least two operators to verify that each ingredient is properly weighed. The weights are then documented on the batch paperwork and verified by the 2 operators in the weigh room. To ensure homogeneity in the blend, employees also employ screens or sieves during the weighing process. This additional step of using screens ensures that all materials are evenly distributed, preventing any potential inconsistencies that could affect the final product’s efficacy. Screens also provide a food safety measure, by ensuring there are no foreign contaminants in the ingredient containers. At this point, quality control also performs a yield reconciliation to confirm the proper amount of ingredients have been added before being released to blend.
Blending – Before the blending process begins, quality control inspects the blending room to ensure it has been thoroughly cleaned and sanitized. Various locations are swabbed with ATP swabs to confirm what a visual inspection alone cannot verify. Once quality control releases the room to production for use, this is documented in the batch paperwork. After the precise weighing of supplement and vitamin ingredients, the next crucial step unfolds in our blending facility. The carefully weighed vitamins and supplements are introduced into our range of blenders, strategically chosen to accommodate the diverse needs of both small and large-scale customers. These blenders, available in varying sizes, are calibrated to ensure optimal mixing efficiency. The blender is selected depending on the size and density of the powder blend.
The blending process is executed with precision to create a homogeneous blend. Once again, quality control calculates a yield reconciliation, organoleptic testing is done, and a bulk density check is done to ensure the blend meets in-process specifications.
Encapsulation/Tableting – Following the blending of our vitamin and supplement components, the homogenous blend enters the next phase of production – encapsulation or tableting if it is a capsule or tablet product.
The newly created blend is carefully scheduled for encapsulation, wherein it is transformed into convenient capsules, or it undergoes tableting to form solid tablets. Each encapsulation or tableting room is inspected by quality and released to production after various areas are ATP swabbed. Once the room is released by quality, the blend is encapsulated or formed into tablets. Our facility contains a variety of machines, each equipped with different tooling and variable parts, allowing us to tailor the production process to meet the specific needs of our customers. This adaptability enables us to strategize run size and address varying levels of formula difficulty with precision.
Whether our customers prefer the ease of capsules or the familiarity of tablets, our commitment to quality remains unchanged. The encapsulation/tableting phase not only ensures the accurate delivery of the formulated blend but also encompasses our adaptability to accommodate different preferences, ensuring a seamless and customer-centric manufacturing process. Once the run has finished, quality will review the finished goods using the AQL (Acceptable Quality Level) process. During this process, a final inspection score will be given based on a variety of physical characteristics with only passing grades allowing the product to move forward. These criteria include but are not limited to, weight, disintegration, friability, hardness, and physical defects such as dents, splits capping, and chipping.
Packaging – The final phase of our production process involves the careful packaging of the encapsulated or tableted vitamin and supplement products. This step takes place on our bottle and jar packaging lines, where attention to detail is paramount. During each packaging changeover, quality will inspect the room to ensure cleanliness, check for leftover components, and approve the next product to be packed.
To cater to the various needs of our customers, packaging components are individually selected for each specific run per customer specifications.
Our packaging lines offer a variety of options, providing flexibility to meet specific custom requirements. These options include but are not limited to, bottle size and color, desiccant size, type, and quantity, volume fill type and quantity, lid color and size, inner seal styles, label height, and width, as well as box size and shape. This level of customization allows us to accommodate a variety of preferences. Our commitment to quality extends to the packaging phase, guaranteeing that the end products are not only correctly formulated but also presented in a manner that reflects our dedication to excellence.
For powdered vitamin and supplement formulations, our production process includes the utilization of specialized filling machines designed to accommodate a wide range of container sizes and shapes. Our commitment to versatility ensures that we can cater to the unique specifications of our customers.
These filling machines are capable of handling various primary container types, including bottles, bags, and pouches. This flexibility extends to finished good weight variations, ranging from as low as 22 grams to multiple kilograms.
The selection of the appropriate filling machine for each product run ensures precision and accuracy in the dosage and packaging of powdered supplements. Whether our customers prefer the convenience of a bottle, the flexibility of a bag, or the practicality of a pouch, our filling machines guarantee a consistent and reliable process that upholds our commitment to delivering high-quality powdered vitamin and supplement products.
Warehouse – Our warehouse operations play an important role in maintaining the integrity and accuracy of our inventory. Upon receiving materials, our dedicated team reviews accompanying paperwork to accurately identify and label all containers. This documentation ensures transparency and traceability throughout the entire warehouse process.
The warehouse team samples all raw materials and gives them to quality control for testing. The quality team performs a comprehensive review, where stringent standards are upheld to ensure that the received materials meet the specified criteria. All samples will go through our identification process and will be tested for bacterial contaminants. Potency and heavy metal testing is done by accredited 3rd party laboratories before being released for use.
Each finished product, now certified and released by our quality assurance team, is prepared for shipping. Pallets are labeled according to the customer’s specifications and are wrapped and labeled with external-facing documents. This careful labeling and documentation process ensures that when a customer receives their product, it is easily identifiable and complies with their specific requirements.
We understand that each customer may have unique shipping needs, and we strive to accommodate those preferences.
Sam Maberry has worked in scheduling for 4 years in dietary supplements and previously 7 years in quality in the food / beverage / supplement industry. He’s familiar with quality regulation, operation demands and customer requirements to ensure high quality products are manufactured in a timely manner.
