OBJECTIVE： To improve the management of automatic medicine packaging machine （ATC），so as to improve drug dispensing management. METHODS： The short-plate effect of “cask theory” was used to analyze the deficiency of ATC in software， hardware and management； pertinent improvement was conducted and its effects were evaluated. RESULTS & CONCLUSIONS： Considering the deficiency of ATC software function， automatic form export function had been set up additionally， involving form of adding and dismounting drug information， form of repeated medical order. Some improvement were carried out for frequent machine halt in hardware， such as adjusting the height of drug box and using spare drug groove； some carried out for inconsistency between the accounts and drugs due to management defects， such as fixing post， improving adding drug information input. Compared with before improvement， daily times of machine halt during packaging had cut from 13.8 times to 2.3 times （decreased by 83.3％）； daily total time of machine halt had shortened from 97.4 minutes to 9.6 minutes （shortened by 90.14％）； the rate of packaging had increased from 14.3 packages/min to 23.33 packages/min （increased by 62.9％）； the management of drug stock became more standard. The application of “cask theory” in the improvement of ATC can promote the quality of drug dispensing management.