Drug companies whose product lines are constantly expanding are finding that robots increase the flexibility of their packaging line.
by Daphne Allen, Editor
If your company has recently been acquired by or has purchased another company, chances are that your product lines have expanded. Your packaging design department has been under pressure to create a new line of packaging styles and labeling, but what about your production lines?
To accommodate the additional packaging styles and sizes and the different labels for each variation, packaging line operators need to streamline their changeover process, which isn't easy if each variation requires new tooling. And, if the line uses dedicated automation hardware, performing changeovers may be next to impossible.
Packaging line integrators, however, have determined how to make pharmaceutical packaging lines flexible enough to handle a wide variety of packaging styles and sizes—by using robotics. Integrators have successfully placed robots at a number of places along the packaging line. In some cases, robots have enabled companies to run multiple package variations on one line with little disruption.
"The robot is well suited for small-volume, highly flexible product lines," says Walter Weisel, president and CEO of Robotic Workspace Technologies Inc. (RWT; Fort Myers Beach, FL), a provider of open-architecture robot control systems. "The rapid changeover demands of the pharmaceutical industry demand the flexibility of a robot."
Robots are also flexible because they can be used for different tasks. "In the pharmaceutical industry, product lives are shorter and product line extensions are broader, so there is pressure on capital equipment to keep up," explains Joe Campbell, vice president of marketing for Adept Technology Inc. (San Jose). Unlike most dedicated automation equipment, robots can be reconfigured to work on different lines.
Perhaps the most appealing aspect of using a robot is the fact that engineers do not have to build a new packaging line for each new product variation. "Companies can't always justify buying new machines nor the time inventing a new line for each new product," says Jeff Reiche of R. A. Jones & Company, Inc. (Cincinnati).
Finally, today's robots are designed to communicate easily with almost any piece of equipment on the packaging line. Whether they are controlled by a personal computer (PC) or by an individual robotic controller, the robots can connect to a network for plantwide control and monitoring.
MULTIPLE PRODUCTS ON ONE LINE
Due to the healthcare industry's 1990s flurry of mergers and acquisitions, many pharmaceutical companies are finding themselves packaging wider lines of products than ever before. "Years ago, a typical pharmaceutical packaging line was required to run only one or two packages, but now some lines are required to run as many as 30 to 40 different packages," says Jim Cooper, sales manager for DCS Engineering and Automation (Bradenton, FL), an integrator of packaging lines.
William DeCamp, the director of marketing at Motoman (West Carrollton, OH), agrees. "Robots are able to handle the high throughput requirements of the pharmaceutical industry with increasing axis speeds and to handle multiple products simultaneously," he says. "A robot can often handle several products at a time, depending on the payload of the robot and the weight of the product and tooling. These robots can be very cost-effective solutions in comparison to dedicated equipment designed to perform a certain task."
According to a study conducted by the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI; Arlington, VA), 59% of the lines in the study are running more than five products. Forty-nine percent change over from one product to another at least once per shift.
With such a variety of packaging sizes to handle, line operators are discovering that their equipment cannot quickly and easily handle the changes. PMMI's data indicate that 75% of all changeovers take more than 30 minutes, and 52% take up to eight hours.
"Dedicated automation systems cannot change over easily and cost effectively," Cooper says. For example, consider a dedicated, high-speed vial labeling and packaging system that is designed to handle a single size of vial. "Adding additional vial sizes to such systems could have a significant impact on either equipment design or changeover or may not be feasible."
Use of a robotic pick-and-place transfer system, however, can accommodate size changes more easily. "Changeover
can be as simple as changing a programming code or downloading information from a central computer," Cooper explains. "At the very most, it involves changing an end effector." In the case of the robotic vial transfer system, the only tooling change required is the changing of the vial-gripping mechanism at the end of the robotic arm.
According to Karen Rashid, pharmaceutical business development manager for Fanuc Robotics North America Inc. (Rochester Hills, MI), "Most product changeovers take only one to two minutes."
Such a robotic changeover can even be performed automatically by the robot. Jeff Engelberger, engineering manager for the Robert E. Morris Co.'s automation division (Farmington, CT), a robotic integrator, recently designed a robotic system that palletizes packaged pharmaceutical products in varying sizes, shapes, and weights. The robot's end effector is equipped with 64 individually controlled suction cups intended to lift and carry packages. Packages from several different lines travel to one of two robots through a network of conveyors. Each robot senses the presence of the packages and reads their bar codes to determine their weight, size, and pallet destination. Equipped with such information, the robot determines how many suction cups it needs to activate in order to lift the packages.
The robot can also handle case changes, explains Engelberger. When the robot senses a case with an open-top configuration, it can automatically switch from its use of suction cups to that of a mechanical gripper.
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