Concept for the Urban Production of Pharmaceuticals to Compensate for Local Shortages

Long and complex supply chains are one of the main reasons for drug shortages. The COVID-19 pandemic and abrupt global lockdown have highlighted how precarious the global pharmaceutical market is. This paper presents a concept for pharmaceutical production in greenfield, urban and local areas as a way to mitigate drug shortages around the world. This approach represents a paradigm shift because the production of medicine tablets still happens mostly at big brownfield sites. The concept is based on the VDI 5200 guidelines and procedures used for factory planning at general production plants. The derived methodology takes three phases into account and enables the integration of continuous tablet manufacturing into urban areas to supply the local population with medicine.