Strategic Partners
Each of the firms that partner with SSI is among the most highly regarded in their respective areas. Technical staffs from SSI and our strategic partner in the pharmaceutical industry, CardinalHealth, have combined as a team and have worked closely with the outside technical sources toward the completion of development and implementation of the production model for SSI’s technology system. The combination of SSI’s technical capability along with that of its production system partners creates a virtual company with expertise across multiple disciplines far in excess of what could be achieved by any one of them.
Each of the partners has made significant investments of resources, specifically senior level management and technical personnel, all of whom are committing a high level of time and energy.
- Catalent Pharma Solutions - A BlackStone Company (Formerly Cardinal PTS)
Catalent Pharma Solutions is the largest outsourcer of pharmaceutical packaging, with its biggest facility, of approximately 500,000 square feet, dedicated to this operation. The division employs a large, world class staff of engineers and technicians, and boasts extensive experience and know-how in all facets of pharmaceutical packaging production. These capabilities, along with an energetic, creative and cooperative in-house team assigned to work with SSI, have facilitated the design, testing, and validation of SSI's technology to meet the requirements in both a high-volume and FDA-regulated production mode.
Besides enabling the division to provide for its pharmaceutical customers the addition of SSI serialized codes to unit-level packages, the operations will represent a valuable “showcase” that pharmaceutical manufacturers can visit and the division will act to facilitate their adoption of SSI's technology if desired.
Qwest Communications is a telecommunications company that manages robust, secure, high-bandwidth data centers. Qwest hosts some of the nation's biggest and most secure Websites. Each data center is connected directly to Qwest's backbone, allowing for fast and efficient data communications.
Qwest's expertise is in web server technology, network engineering, and physical security. Its Sterling, Virginia, data center is located within two miles of SSI's Technology Center. This gives SSI a uniquely close relationship with Qwest's engineers and support staff.
Qwest hosts SSI's Track and Trace™ data warehouse and provides all associated security and engineering services required to maintain SSI as a 24x7, secure, scalable system.
- CardinalHealth PILOT Project
Importantly, to facilitate and maximize its opportunity in pharmaceuticals, SSI has in place a strategic partnership with a Fortune 100 company, CardinalHealth, which has a division positioned as the largest outsource provider of pharmaceutical packaging services. CardinalHealth has done business with virtually all the large pharmaceutical companies globally and, accordingly, will lead the selling and marketing effort. This business arrangement originated at CardinalHealth's corporate level, which has a strategic commitment to becoming the leader in pharmaceutical brand security solutions.
CardinalHealth believes that SSI's system and RFID represent highly complementary technologies and, consequently, has adopted each as part of a two-prong approach to the brand security issue in the pharmaceutical marketplace. As a result, CardinalHealth has authorized two pilot projects—SSI's barcoding solution, which has already essentially been completed, and an RFID solution. The results of SSI's pilot test were outstanding, meeting virtually all of CardinalHealth's requirements, exhibiting speeds of just under 200 packages printed per minute with a 99.34% average pass rate. The implementation of SSI's technology into production mode has proved much easier than implementing RFID, because the design of the “crash cart” allows it to adapt to existing production requirements regardless of product unit size.
Both parties to the partnership agree that SSI's system is the most immediate and practical solution to allow pharmaceutical companies to comply with current regulatory mandates. Existing scanners at all pharmaceutical dispensing locations will be able to read SSI's bar codes, circumventing the RFID future requirement “problem” of creating a reader capability across the broad point-of-sale spectrum. Further, SSI's solution is adaptable to all pharmaceutical products, including the important area of biologics; the FDA will not endorse RFID for biologics until further work can be done to ensure that the radio wave transmission does not create a potential hazard. The SSI solution does not have this problem with biologics, which represent a significant portion of high value drugs that are often counterfeited. In addition, the SSI system is viewed both as a stand-alone solution, a pre-cursor to RFID, and ultimately a back-up to RFID in the possible event of chip failure or hacking.
The existing extreme regulatory pressures on the pharmaceutical industry, along with a committed strategic partner with major ties to the industry, offers a powerful combining force behind SSI's confidence that it will achieve rapid penetration of this market. Thanks to CardinalHealth's premarketing efforts, the company has had the opportunity to present its equipment to a significant number of major pharmaceutical companies. Among them are Pfizer, Merck, Novo, Nordisk, Abbott, GlaxoSmith Kline, Lilly and Bristol-Meyers.
In addition to its substantial strategic partner, SSI also has a significant and evolving partnership with Luciano Packaging Technologies (LPT), the preeminent knowledge-based packaging solutions company. LPT has worked closely with the company to design, specify, and assemble the hardware for the SSI unit. LPT has among its past and current client base every major pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and retail companies. Established in 1972, LPT has the long-proven experience to provide a design and customization element to the SSI™ system.
Since its inception in 1972, HyPex has grown from a two person machine shop into a specialty manufacturer. Our two business segments employ approximately 100 people in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. HyPex is a leader in Contract Manufacturing and the Design and Build of Custom Equipment for leading-edge companies and is also an ISO 9001/2000 Registered Company.
HyPex Contract Manufacturing Services include precision machining, fabrication or assembly of complex components and assemblies. From prototyping through product and supply chain management, HyPex provides customers with a wide array of manufacturing solutions to support their needs. HyPex has the right combination of personnel, equipment and facilities resources to support a wide range of capabilities.
HyPex Custom Equipment provides turnkey engineering and manufacturing solutions to customers for their proprietary equipment needs. These include automated assembly equipment, line integration, product development and equipment re-engineering. HyPex's high proficient staff of engineers and technicians enables us to tackle the most demanding designs with confidence.
RapidACE is a leading developer of highly secure, scalable databases. Rooted in both industry and university the principals of RapidACE have worked closely with SSI's developers to establish a series of databases that because of their unique design will not become obsolescent as the electronic pedigree requirements change from state to state. .
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