As sales increased in 1984, Whitehall Labs, the US distributor of Advil, quickly realized Boots (the original manufacturer) could not keep up with demand. Boots was essentially making the product manually.
Michael Dryden of the Whitehall R&D staff was assigned to form a team and create an automated manufacturing process as soon as possible. Dryden hired Guido Melenger, the head of a small pharma scale-up firm, to come up with an automated process.
After three years of work, a team from Whitehall concluded Melenger would be unable to complete the task and feared his company was about to go out of business.
Whitehall then formed an internal team consisting of Dryden, Webb Crew (to develop software) and George Van Parys (to develop the machinery). The first prototype machine was produced in late 1986, with the first production operation of units in late 1987.
