Robotics in Pharmaceutical / Nutraceutical Manufacturing
Pharmaceutical and Nutraceutical companies are increasingly looking to integrate automation and robotics technologies into processes such as drug development, manufacturing, and anti-counterfeiting.
Automation technologies can boost the speed of the manufacturing process and increase safety and efficiency, while also reducing manpower cost.
Challenge:
The goal was to replace significant manual handling labour from their cost structure whilst achieving high, consistent and accurate performance as required in the pharma market. The customer had to replace many manual tasks in a very tight footprint, whilst also increasing current average performance by a team of manual handlers.
Solution:
The system has achieved a 4 headcount reduction per shift with the only operator intervention being to load consumables such as flat cartons. The system is integrated to the customers’ SAP system so all production data and batch/product details are automatically sent which eliminate operator errors. The system can consistently deliver output for the entire job length.
As space in the production area was a huge issue, the system can accept a wide range of shrink-wrapped products, label the packs, erect, pack and palletise the finished cartons to suit each product and end user in a very small 4 x 5m space.
Main equipment list
1 x Motoman Scara robot (pick and label)
2 x Motoman MH50 robots (1 x carton erect and pack, 1 x palletise)
List of benefits
- High performance
- Consistency over the production day
- Accuracy and traceability
- Ease of operator interface and user friendliness