PROCTER & GAMBLE UNVEILS NEW $3 MILLION QUALITY CONTROL LABORATORY

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Procter & Gamble has unveiled its new quality control laboratory Pines External Lab located in Berkeley Springs, launched in joint partnership with Morgan County and Blue Ridge Community & Technical College.

The $3 million, 11,000 square foot state-of-the-art centre is said to be used to evaluate raw materials using resources such as gas and liquid chromatography, as well as in-process and end product samples. These tests will ensure P&G products contain no foreign micro-organisms.

Said to be a support for the new P&G Tabler Station manufacturing plant, slated for launch by the end of the year, the facility is looking to use a lab integrated management system (LIMS) in order for it to be paperless in the future.

Don Longworthy, P&G Quality Assurance Initiative Leader, said, “Our research and development group make the recipe for the (P&G) cake, the plant makes the cake, and quality control makes sure the cake is made correctly.”

Speaking of going digital, Longworthy said, “Our vision is to be completely digital. Samples will come in, they’ll have a bar code on them, get scanned into the system, and that will direct the work to go on in the entire laboratory.”

Long-term, the plant will be handed over to the Tabler Station facility in summer 2018, with P&G looking at ways of using the lab once the transfer takes place.

Venkateswaran Ananthanarayan, P&G Director, quality assurance, global beauty for P&G, said, “The P&G quality control represents an investment from P&G into the Eastern Panhandle community. P&G hopes that this is the first of the many opportunities to partner with the local community and improve the lives of the residents here.”

Posted by Louise Prance-Miles | Sep 14, 2017 | Manufacturing, North America