Value Drugs purchases it’s chemical inputs from reputable brokers in the Massive City area.  These chemicals are delivered  directly, and are kept in special sealed vats and drums in a temperature controlled environment with specially secured locks.  Only Joe Formulary has access to these chemicals, as some of them are highly flammable.  Because the planned expansion requires increased complexity in the production process, this section describes the company’s planned production processes, not it’s existing ones.

When ready to mix a batch of either one of it’s products, Joe Formulary will supervise the mixing efforts.  The mixing will be an all-day task involving varying the temperature conditions in several pressurized vats.  The pressurized vats will be six-foot high pieces of equipment  holding several thousand gallons of mixture.  This vat will compress chemicals to remove tiny air bubbles and vapors.  Next, the chemicals will be automatically loaded onto an attached mixer in a highly compressed state, where they will be mixed into a base.  

Finally, the base material will be poured by special lifting arms into a large vat for dilution.  The dilution vat contains special jets that inject the diluting agent (primarily water in the case of stomach-relief, and a water/alcohol mixture in the case of cough syrup) into the mixed chemical compound.  The vat has a special cover designed to re-pressurize the mixture during the process and also contains large mixing blades in four levels.  The mixture process will typically take two hours for cough syrup and two and one half-hours for the stomach-relief medication.  

The vat full of final product will be attached to a tube designed to deliver the product into a compressor that will compress and inject the substance into bottles placed under jets.  There will be twelve jets attached to the compressing device, and each one will have it’s own button.  Depressing the button will cause that jet to release the substance from the nozzle in the preset desired amount.

There will be very few hazardous activities associated with the manufacturing process.  The machinery will all have double-locking mechanical arms which will not permit operation while they are open, and will have few moving parts on the outside.

The only hazardous elements of machinery operated in Value Drugs design scheme will be the rocking arms that pivot the machinery. The forklift will be used to move boxes of product from the floor of the manufacturing facility to the loading dock, and the exterior of the two mixing devices, that reach extremely high temperatures.

Joe Formulary has, working with an insurance team, determined solutions for most of these problems.  Special insulation will be applied to the exterior of the machinery preventing burns and other injuries.  The pivoting machinery arms will be completely obstructed by a metal casing device that Mr. Formulary plans to weld and attach himself.  Finally, employees will be instructed on the proper distances and safety precautions necessary when working around a forklift, and will be educated on the lanes and speeds used by the forklift during those few times it will be in operation.

Finally, given the company’s willingness to take these precautionary measures, his insurance company has agreed to extremely reasonable workers’ compensation rates to cover all work-related injuries in the Value Drugs facilities.