Package and Product Integrity Blog

DDL, Inc. will be exhibiting at the 2011 MD&M Minneapolis Expo & Conference next month in the Twin Cities. The show kicks off with the conference on November 1st at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

MD&M Minneapolis’ Expo hall maximizes your time by gathering the world’s best and most qualified suppliers under one roof. They know your industry, understand your objectives, and are ready to help you bring that new device to market and accelerate your project’s completion

DDL’s Lead Packaging Engineer Scott Levy is a co-chair of the Medical Device Packaging Update at the conference on Thursday, November 3rd. We invite you to join Scott, along with co-chair Kevin Zacharias of Oliver-Tolas Healthcare Packaging for an update on happenings in the medical device packaging industry.

DDL will be exhibiting at booth #830 during the expo, where you will have an opportunity to talk to Scott Levy about any current and upcoming package testing projects.

We look forward to seeing you at this year’s show. If you have any questions regarding your package testing needs, please contact us, we are happy to help answer your questions.

Save the Date! DDL and Cryopak will be hosting their Fall Package Testing and Cold Chain Packaging Seminar and Interactive Workshops, October 11-12 at our east coast laboratory and manufacturing facility in Edison, NJ.

Package Testing Presentation Topics:

• Distribution Simluation by DDL’s Packaging Engineer, Peter Johnson

• Test Method Validation by our Director of Operations, Corey Hensel

• Materials Used in Your Sterile Barrier System for Shelf-Life Products

Package Testing Workshops Sessions:

• ASTM F88 – Peel Seal Testing

• ASTM F2096 – Bubble Leak Testing

• ASTM F1929 – Dye Leak Testing

• ASTM F1886 – Visual Inspection Testing

Cold Chain Packaging Presentation Topics

• Use of Thermal Modeling Software

• Thermal Transportation Package Design

• How thermal modeling is used in transport packaging design work

• The effects of engineered phase change materials in package design

Cold Chain Packaging Workshop

• Assembly of a cold chain pack out

• How the thermal package is readied for testing

To learn more about DDL and Cryopak’s Fall Packaging Seminar, please visit the event page below for further details and to register.

Register for DDL/Cropak’s Fall Package Testing and Cold Chain Packaging Seminar >>

DDL will be exhibiting at the 2011 MD&M East Expo & Conference next month in New York City. The show kicks off with the conference on June 6th at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

MD&M East’s Expo hall maximizes your time by gathering the world’s best and most qualified suppliers under one roof. They know your industry, understand your objectives, and are ready to help you bring that new device to market and accelerate your project’s completion

DDL’s Lead Packaging Engineer Scott Levy is a co-chair of the Medical Device Packaging Update at the conference on Wednesday, June 8th. We invite you to join Scott, along with co-chair Kevin Zacharias of Oliver-Tolas Healthcare Packaging for an update on happenings in the medical device packaging industry.

DDL will be exhibiting at booth #1969 during the expo, where you will have an opportunity to talk to Scott Levy about any current and upcoming medical packaging projects.

We look forward to seeing you at this year’s show. If you have any questions regarding your package testing needs, please contact us, we are happy to help answer your questions.

DDL President, Patrick Nolan and DDL East Lab Manager, Rick Roberti will be attending next week’s ISTA International Transport Packaging Forum in Orlando, Florida.

ISTA’s International Transport Packaging Forum is the most well attended educational event providing the latest ideas and advancements of sustainable transport packaging and the physical distribution of products. The international educational and networking advantages are superior! The Forum will provide you with quality presentations and valuable case studies from world-leading experts along with opportunities to interact with industry peers to discuss critical issues, share solutions, gain ideas and ultimately become a more knowledgeable packaging professional.

Will you be attending this year’s  Transport Packaging Forum and what are you hoping to get out of it?

DDL Packaging Engineer Scott Levy, discusses some of the current standards in relation to distribution simulation testing. Scott explains the importance of understanding the standards, as well as how future changes may affect medical device manufacturers bringing new products to market.

Due to the global movement with sustainable initiatives and in an effort to “go green”, many global corporations are looking to implement new package designs be material source reduction, while still maintaining regulatory compliance. There are many important factors for these companies to consider in order to achieve their sustainability goals, which is why I will be attending next week’s  Sustainable Packaging Forum & Expo in Phoenix, Arizona.

Packaging Strategies’ 6th Annual Sustainable Packaging Forum will focus on the latest sustainable packaging practices, business strategies and technologies from across the globe that support company growth while meeting today’s sustainability challenges.

One of our reasons for being at the show next week is to speak with companies and individuals that are looking to implement changes to packaging using optimization by source reduction. One of our goals is to provide resources to industries that want to produce sustainable packaging and help them ensure they don’t run into unintended consequences from initial package design, material selection for optimal source reduction and qualification or compliance issues. If you are at the show next week in Phoenix, make sure to stop by DDL’s booth at the expo to say hi to Pat and learn more about what we are doing to help companies design, test and implement sustainable packaging initiatives.

Listed below are several questions and corresponding answers that have come up in the recent past, concerning ISTA conditioning.  The answers to our questions, which have been supplied by Meredith Dougherty of ISTA, can be utilized to make decisions on how we quote, conduct these tests and help answer any customer questions that may come up.

DDL Question #1:

I have a question on time tolerances for the ISTA 2A conditioning.

Ex. -29C Uncontrolled for 72 hours.

Let’s say we went over the required 72 hours by 3 hours for a total of 75 hours. Is there a tolerance on the time or does this become a deviation, because we went over the 72 hour requirement?

ISTA Answer to Question #1:

The test levels in ISTA procedures and projects are considered required minimums.  If those levels are exceeded there is no problem – as long as the minimum level is achieved the test report will be acceptable.

DDL Question #2:

I would like to know if the ISTA 2A conditionings needs to be performed continuously for 72hrs (minimum) or can this be cumulative.

Say we are running an ISTA cycle and somehow a chamber malfunctions after 38hrs of conditioning, I understand it is best to start the conditioning over for 72hrs. However, can we choose to add in the additional 34hrs to complete the 72hrs cycle.

ISTA Answer to Question #2:

You can look at this in two ways:

1.    If the customer is a member of ISTA and is looking for packaged-product certification, then the conditioning would need to be re-started and run for a continuous 72 hours in order to comply with the procedure.

2.    If the customer is not a member, and is looking for a test report direct form the lab, then you could do as you propose.  As always, I would recommend documenting however it was handled, so that if a repeat is needed in the future it could be done easily.
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All three of our labs here at DDL are now under one certificate and one quality system, which will help provide consistent delivery of our tests to our customers for their medical device testing, as well as product and material testing needs.

The registration of our DDL East lab in Edison, NJ, which opened in the late January 2009, was the third and final lab to be registered with BSI to ISO9001:2008.

Here is a glimpse of the TCP Reliable and DDL booth from last week’s Pack Expo 2009 trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Scott Levy and Lyndsey Danberry from DDL, David Whitt from TCP and Raj Gill from Cryopak were all there to handle the busy yearly conference.

There was a very diverse crowd of attendees; ranging from food manufacturers looking for temperature controlled packaging solutions for shipping, to pharmaceutical folks looking for cooling solutions  to streamline turnaround on time sensitive products. The biggest names in package testing and package design were all there to show off their products and services, as well as enjoy some time in Sin City.

Did you attend Pack Expo 2009?