In pharma manufacturing, quality has always been the most significant concern. Stringent regulatory or statutory requirements of the FDA mean high liabilities for mistakes in production. The pharma industry is continuously in quest of innovative ways to validate quality. One-way manufacturers are increasing quality controls with machine vision technology. Quality control is one of the essential drivers of intelligent vision systems and vice versa. Along with delivering reliably high-quality products, machine vision can also bring productivity, efficiency and competency improvements within the limits of strict quality demands. Overall, to fit in the growing competition, the pharma industry cannot afford to fall back or slow down.
New possibilities with advanced technologies
The governments and regulators worldwide are pushing advanced technologies to tighten up and standardise the distribution of pharma medicines. Digitisation and advanced automation have opened the door to protect consumer safety and avoid diversion, theft and counterfeiting. The advanced machine vision technology plays a significant role in achieving and maintaining these compliances and staying competent throughout the manufacturing and packaging stages involved on the production floor. Machine vision can be used to inspect different processes like code validation, matching, shape identification, QA for the filling and capping, liquid-filling level, contamination, sealing, labeling, QR code identification etc. Machine vision leads to productivity through lower operating costs by utilising less labour in the inspection process.
Production lines in the pharma industry generally operate at high speeds, and machines are often pushed to their extreme levels to achieve production goals. Regular servicing of machines does not provide 100 per cent protection against unexpected failures. Faults do not only cause downtime on the affected machine or whole production line; they also hamper the quality of drugs. Maintenance engineers invest a lot of time and spend money in solving unseen problems in fast processes. The comprehensive machine vision solution can capture images of mechanical processes that work at high speeds. This quality of high-speed imaging can lower the maintenance cost and increase the quality by reducing downtime and change over time.
Quality and packaging benefits
Traceability, packaging and quality are critical challenges manufacturers face where the possible departments could benefit significantly by using machine vision technology.
In the packaging departments, the machine vision technology can be used in quantity and condition detection, an inspection of packaging items like dose applicators and printed instructions. Manufacturers can utilise machine vision on the production and packaging lines to ensure that their production units meet their organisational quality requirements and other compliances.
It is imperious that medicines and other products should be trackable in the pharma industry while transporting them to distribution centres and stores for maximum compliance and accountability. In case of any issues like defects or unforeseen side effects are seen by patients, the drugs or any other medical products must be traceable from the patient’s possession back to the manufacturer.
Pharma manufacturers are responsible for providing all the necessary tracking and manufacturer information with their products. Machine vision solutions can help consolidate all this information and deliver it across channels during many steps of the shipping process.
Companies can utilise machine vision technology to ensure their tracking information is accurate and readily available across the distribution channels. This could be in the case of an emergency or a simple customer service inquiry.
Productivity benefits
Along with meeting the quality requirements, machine vision enhances pharma application’s productivity through the speed of inspection. Manual inspection processes are usually slow and are prone to errors. As machine vision advances and cameras become faster, the pharma inspection process also speeds up, leading to a more productive and efficient manufacturing process.
Usually, machine vision provides ease of use, creating further productivity improvements. Machine vision technology is becoming easier to implement and practice, resulting in lower operating costs.
Once the machine vision system is in place, they further automate pharma production. For example, inspecting package integrity on a conveyor can inform an automated material handling system, which faulty packages are to pull off the production line. This also leads to faster manufacturing and gains in productivity.
There are many additional ways that machine vision systems lead to more productive pharma production, but ease of use, accuracy and speed are the main sources of productivity.
Machine vision by B&R
B&R’s machine vision is an embedded vision system whose flexibility and unprecedented integration eliminate the drawbacks previously associated with these systems. These cameras can perform an extensive range of machine vision tasks that are presently being supported by PC-based systems.
An essential factor of B&R’s machine vision system is its intelligent lighting technology. Lighting elements are integrated into the camera, as an external device, or even as a combination of the two. The possibility of automatic lighting modulation prevents stray light and other challenging lighting conditions from compromising performance. It also makes it easy to achieve exact synchronisation for high-speed image capture or implement object-specific requirements such as bright-field or dark-field illumination.
B&R has taken machine vision to a whole new level with integrated solutions. The cameras, intelligent image processing algorithms, and innovative lighting portfolio are an integral part of the B&R control system. At the heart of B&R’s vision solution is a broad selection of intelligent cameras. Options at the lower end will replace simple machine vision sensors, while the top of the range will harness the full potential of high-end smart cameras. For the entire portfolio of cameras, there are easy-to configure machine vision functions for creating applications with minimal programming.
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