The pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is an intriguing and challenging industry to be involved in, because the tablets produced must be of the highest quality. To ensure this high quality one needs to fully understand the process and all aspects relating to it. The production process must comply with strictly regulated manufacturing requirements. Some tablet processes are extremely sensitive to minor changes in the excipients or APIs and also in the tablet press settings and parameters. All of these points are raised in brief to bring about the awareness of them to those who work with the tablet presses. This book gives an overview of each component of the machine and how it can influence the correct operation of the tablet process. This manual addresses the problems which may arise during manufacture and ways to solve these problems are listed along with colour pictures of tablet defects. Much of this knowledge comes with time and experience and with the pressure on current production levels and the competition in the market place, precious time could be saved by using reference manuals such as this manual.

I started working in the pharmaceutical industry in 1985 and have been involved in oral solid dosage manufacturing since then. From 1985 - 2006, I had the opportunity of working on a variety of tablet presses, from single punch tablet presses to state of the art high speed automatic tablet presses. I was fortunate to be involved in the construction and implementation of a modern oral solid dosage manufacturing plant to meet the current FDA and MHRA certification, this included the FAT and SAT of all the equipment and the training of the operating staff.

I have also carried out tablet processing training modules to various pharmaceutical manufacturing companies.