For the purpose of protecting pharmaceuticals from contamination with microbes or nonviable particles filling and closing machinery are equipped with isolators or other barrier systems. It is not only the Sterility Assurance Level (SAL) which is focused upon but also the non-productive time for decontamination processes between batches which has to be taken into account.
This article describes and evaluates a new technology to reduce the cycle time of isolators.

What performance requirements are needed for analytical procedures to ensure an alignment with the enhanced approach of Quality by Design for product/process?
An analytical procedure should be followed during the life cycle of the product to continually assure that it remains fit for its intended purpose.

The techniques available for the microbiological monitoring of products and manufacturing environments have come a long way in the last few decades. Even though enumerating microbial cells by counting colonies on an agar filled Petri dish is still a common technique, a variety of more sophisticated and rapid methods are making their way into the quality control microbiology laboratory. These Rapid Microbiological Methods (RMM) exploit chemical and physical methods developed to elucidate the structure of cell components and the functions of biomolecules. These methods are then applied to the detection, enumeration, and identification of microorganisms that may be present in pharmaceutical, food and beverage, water and other samples submitted to the quality control labs. Thus, the simple view of a bacterial cell as a tiny living entity so small as to be invisible to the naked eye, and countable only by either microscopy or culture, is changing to a much more complex picture encompassing the most intimate details of the cell structure and the biomolecules that form it.