A checkweigher from Garvens, part of the Mettler Toledo Group, checks vital insulin for the Injectables Division of Sanofi-Aventis, where liquid drugs for diabetes or emergency medicine are produced.
Sanofi-Aventis is involved in key medical areas such as the treatment of diabetes, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular problems, thrombosis and central nervous system difficulties.
It also provides solutions in the fields of internal medicine, oncology and disease prevention through progressive vaccines.
Its packaged medical compounds are subjected to final checks using a checkweigher from Garvens.
The XS2 checkweigher separates packages with missing or empty vials.
The smallest vial's capacity is 1ml, with a fill weight of 1g.
More than 20 different drugs in a variety of package sizes are packed on this production line, with a throughput of up to 400 packages per minute with an accuracy of 0.3g.
Defective product packages are generally those that have been under or overfilled, as well as packages that are not correctly aligned or askew, and are sorted by two separate air jets into separate collection containers.
A good product countercheck is performed by a downstream light barrier to ensure that all bad products have been successfully sorted.
At this point, the downstream drop-down conveyor is lowered to guarantee that only good products are sent down the line for further packing.
In this fashion all products located on the checkweigher are removed from the transport path and any incomplete drug packages are safely removed from the production process.
The checkweigher then triggers the conveyor belt to stop by means of a time delay, thus enabling operating staff to perform an additional quality-control check.
The checkweigher is operated via the touch-screen terminal, with individual user profiles programmed for separate operators.
As the weight of all the individual package components can vary from batch to batch, the 'gliding limits' function is used to take these weight fluctuations into account by defining variable upper and lower limits.
This enables medium- and long-term fluctuations against the mean value to be recorded and remedied, which in turn enables compensating for long-term fluctuations by using these newly calculated tolerance limits.
The removal of the defective products under the 'gliding limits' option is based solely on the nominal weight of the pharmaceutical product.
The Garvens checkweigher also supports the IPC check required in the pharmaceutical industry.
Quality control spot checks must be performed on a regular basis for documentation reasons.
These 'spot-check products' are sorted by the checkweigher with the touch of a button.
Extensive product tracking between the checkweigher's in and out feed conveyors is a standard feature on the X-Series.
This allows the active, continuous tracking of products required by pharmaceutical industry safety guidelines.
