From Destructive to Digital: Automating Tablet Quality Control for Advanced Manufacturing

The modernisation imperative

Across the pharmaceutical sector, the journey toward advanced manufacturing is reshaping how quality is designed, measured, and assured. Regulators are supporting this shift, given the intrinsic advantages of advanced manufacturing, such as increased speed, higher quality, and a better environmental footprint. Ageing facilities, sustainability goals, and the need for agility are accelerating this transformation, allowing manufacturers to be more agile, flexible, and able to pivot when needed.

Yet one area has remained stubbornly traditional: tablet testing. Many drug manufacturers still rely on at-line and off-line measurements supported by destructive testing to confirm that each batch meets specifications. These methods consume time, solvents, and skilled labour while generating considerable analytical waste. As companies invest in digitalisation and greener operations, re-thinking tablet testing has become both a technological and an environmental necessity.

Why traditional testing must evolve

Traditional at-line or off-line QC involves multiple separate instruments to measure assay, content uniformity, dissolution, hardness, disintegration, and water content. Each test destroys valuable product and creates chemical wast  that must be treated or incinerated. The overall footprint (including solvent use, energy consumption, and analyst hours) clashes with today’s goal for sustainable, data-rich manufacturing.

In the sustainability hierarchy of waste, this approach sits near the bottom: almost everything produced during analysis must be discarded. Non-destructive alternatives, by contrast, can dramatically reduce waste and improve throughput while maintaining data integrity and regulatory confidence.

The shift toward digital and non-destructive methods

Advances in spectroscopy and modelling are enabling digital quality control, where analytical insight comes from data, not destruction. Techniques such as transmission NIR, transmission Raman, terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS), time-domain NMR, microwave resonance, and optical coherence tomography can capture multiple critical quality attributes (CQAs) without damaging the sample.

When coupled with mechanistic and chemometric models, these techniques allow the prediction of assay, content uniformity, dissolution, disintegration, and even coating thickness from a single measurement. This hybrid-fusion approach combines data from several spectroscopic sources to deliver a holistic picture of tablet quality, turning what was once a destructive sequence of tests into an intelligent, model-based evaluation.

Such strategies align perfectly with the regulators’ vision of continuous,  science based control and the industry’s push for greener, faster release testing.

Automation and integration: robotics meet digital orchestration

Automation is the bridge between analytical innovation and manufacturing reality. A modern digital QC system integrates:

• Robotics for precise, reproducible tablet handling and positioning and increased throughput.
• Analytical instruments (for example, tNIR or tRaman spectrometers), providing the scientific data foundation.
• Intelligent orchestration software such as synTQ, managing instrument coordination, model execution, and full traceability within a compliant framework.

Together, these elements create a connected, GMP-ready environment where data flows from measurement to decision, reducing variability and enabling near real-time release. Systems run practically 24/7, freeing up valuable time for scientist to dedicated to more strategic, no-yet automatable tasks

The SciYbotic TT: Modern automated tablet testing in action

The SciYbotic Tablet Testing (TT) platform exemplifies this convergence of spectroscopy, automation, and digital control. Within a single modular unit, it performs multiple CQA evaluations: weight, dimensional checks, content uniformity, and assay, using robotic handling and non-destructive spectroscopy.

Vendor-agnostic by design, the system can integrate different analytical technologies and connect directly with synTQ for data capture and chemometric model management. The result is a cleaner, faster, and more sustainable workflow: fewer manual steps, less solvent waste, and shorter decision cycles, all while strengthening data integrity and reproducibility.

For manufacturers, this translates into measurable benefits: speed, cost efficiency, quality, and sustainability, the four pillars that define advanced manufacturing.

SciYbotic TT was developed to make non-destructive tablet testing more accurate and precise, scalable, and ready for the future of manufacturing.

Watch this simplified render to see how the SciYbotic TT transforms traditional quality control into a fully automated, data-driven process.

Want to see the robot in the real world?

Challenges and outlook

Transitioning from conventional QC to digital, non-destructive release is not without hurdles. Robust chemometric models must be built, validated, and maintained. Instruments and automation platforms must demonstrate reliability under GMP conditions. Regulatory acceptance will evolve gradually as data accumulates from real-world implementations.

Nevertheless, momentum is building. The combination of hybrid-fusion modelling, automation, and digital orchestration offers a practical route toward continuous, data-driven release testing, an essential step on the road to advanced manufacturing maturity.

A mindset shift

As Roger Mavity observed, “Conventional wisdom tends to produce conventional results”. To deliver the next generation of high-quality medicines faster and more sustainably, pharmaceutical manufacturers must challenge convention: embracing data-centric, automated, and non-destructive approaches to tablet testing.

The journey from destructive to digital is more than a technological upgrade; it is the foundation of a smarter, greener, and more resilient pharmaceutical industry.