ENGINEERING

Engineering for Food and Pharmaceutical Industry



Engineering for Food and Pharmaceutical Industry

Introduction

Engineering has become a growing international field for the food and pharmaceutical industries, over a period of past few years. Food and Pharmaceutical engineers are responsible for designing, constructing and maintaining the technology procedures that are used for drug production and food processing. This paper discusses the major applications of engineering to the food and pharmaceutical industry.

Discussion

Food and Pharmaceutical engineering has been considered as a growing field, and has the potential for offering career opportunities to large number of people. The Engineers in these industries play a vital role for designing the technology procedures, and maintaining the quality of end products. The role of engineers is vital for the food and pharmaceutical industries, as they help the companies in technological procedures. It is to be noted that in today's rapidly changing world, technology plays a major and essential part for improving efficiency and increasing productivity.

The engineering activities in the food and pharmaceutical industry ensure the safety of consumers as well as the workers involve in the manufacturing processes. We discuss the engineering field for both industries separately in next sections of the paper.

Engineering for Pharmaceutical Industry

Pharmaceutical engineering is a sub branch of pharmaceutical science and technology. This field mainly involves the processes used for the design and development of the processes and products of the pharmaceutical industry (mainly, the drugs). The field also deals with induction and working of engineers in the medicine manufacturing, and pharmaceutical companies (eHow, 2012). The field of pharmaceutical engineering promises to offer exciting career opportunities to new entrants. According to an estimate made by US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there would be a 9.4% increase in the field, by the year 2018. Specialized certification program known as Certified Pharmaceutical Industry Professional is being offered by The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering, to affirm and validate the technical knowledge competency, leadership and critical thinking skills, and quality focus of the pharmaceutical engineer (ISPE, 2012).

Pharmaceutical engineering defines the technological processes and procedures for manufacturing the drug, while maintain the quality of end product. They are often responsible for the management of research centres and the manufacturing plants, run by the pharmaceutical companies. In addition, the responsibilities of pharmaceutical engineer are to look after the regulatory obligations of the manufacturing process. The implementations of regulations posed by Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and maintaining Good ...