China Industry Network reporter Li Xinyuan Yin Wenzhuo
In August, the 2023 World Robot Conference was held in Beijing Yizhuang (Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone), and 13 companies from Yizhuang made a collective appearance with new products and technologies, and the application of robots was amazing. The popularity has not decreased, and recently the reporter of China Industry Network came to the "robot base camp" of Beijing Yizhuang, and chose to enter Bayer Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Co., Ltd. to experience the digital assembly line operation up close.
The seven-axis robot is the first to load the box
Change shoes three times before and after, wear disposable socks and hoods, do a good job of cleaning and disinfection, and change into clean clothes, the reporter of Zhonggong.com walked into the digital workshop of aspirin production.
In the production and packaging workshop, 4 fully automatic packaging lines operate simultaneously.
In the primary packaging shop, the pressed tablets are filled into the plates and sealed before being transported by the production line to the secondary packaging room for unified boxing.
The medicine board is composed of aluminum foil above and PVC below, and after the PVC packaging film enters the equipment, it is heated and formed to form rows of bubbles.
In the next area, the tablets are filled in the formed bubble in turn, and the machine automatically removes the tablets with cosmetic defects. The quality tested medicine board enters the sealing area with the assembly line, and the medicine plate filled with tablets is sealed and formed, and a complete medicine board is ready.
Following the drug board into the secondary packaging workshop, the reporter saw the seven-axis robot box loading system introduced by the aspirin workshop, which was the first seven-axis robot introduced in the domestic pharmaceutical industry to undertake the product box loading work introduced during the project design and construction of 2014-2016. The seven-axis robot takes the pill box out of the box and places it precisely on the conveyor belt. The medicine board is automatically pushed into the carton machine, and the instructions are automatically folded and accurately inserted into the carton together with the medicine board.
Depending on the packaging material, the robot can complete different adaptations. The robot arm adapts to the weight of the package by adjusting the suction cups of different strength. The monitoring screen shows that the line can produce 450 boxes per minute.
Once the cartridge is packed, it enters the checkweighing system, where it is automatically rejected if the plate is missing or the instruction insert is missing. The checkweighing system is not only fast, but also very accurate, the weight of the qualified product fluctuates by one gram, and the checkweighing system error is only a few tenths of a gram.
Aspirin finished product photo courtesy of interviewee
The whole process of pharmaceutical packaging relies on automated system control, and only a few operators control and monitor the production process in real time through computer terminals. The workshop automation rate reaches 99%, which effectively reduces the incidence of manual operation errors and defects, and then improves the one-time pass rate of products.
The electronic traceability code allows the whole production process to be traced
After completing the boxing, the qualified medicine boxes automatically enter the baler. The packing machine breaks the scattered boxes into a package state, a pack of 10 boxes, which is convenient for packing. Employees also monitor the status of the production line in real time by monitoring equipment, when the equipment fails, the fault indicator will light up for the first time, and the employees will check the equipment according to the fault information.
"People come first." Li Haitao, manager of the investment project management department of Beijing Supply Center, told the reporter of China Industry Network: "While we help employees adapt to the equipment operation process, we also encourage employees to innovate and listen to their feedback, which is also an experimental process." ”
In addition to the full automation of pharmaceutical packaging, logistics and product documentation are also a highlight of the digital workshop. Li Haitao said that by establishing contact with the logistics production system, quality system, transportation system and broadcast system, fully automated management has been realized from the delivery of raw materials to production to delivery. Compared with the previous decentralized management, the various systems have achieved mutual coordination and cooperation.
The pharmaceutical industry is closely related to the health and safety of patients, and information recording and drug traceability are also particularly important. Before the advancement of digitalization, all information was completed through manual records, which often faced problems such as short storage time and easy errors. Through the introduction of production and manufacturing management system and laboratory management system, an integrated management system is formed from production packaging to logistics and warehousing, and the information record storage time is increased to ten years or even permanently, so as to establish a comprehensive factory.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee
After completing the packaging of the drug into a box, the equipment automatically prints out the PC label printed with the electronic traceability code, product production line, production date, batch number... As long as the electronic traceability code can be scanned, it can be obtained to achieve a "code". From production to packaging to delivery to patients, the electronic traceability code enables monitoring and traceability of the entire process.
After the electronic traceability code is affixed, the packaging box will enter the automatic elevator and then to the assembly center of the storage area for automatic assembly, and then put into the warehouse for storage. From pharmaceutical packaging to final warehousing, the entire process is basically completed by the machines on the assembly line, achieving maximum automation, unmanned and digitalization.
"The use of industrial cloud, big data and other technologies to achieve information traceability such as product manufacturing and operation and maintenance services, and the establishment of industrial information security and technical protection system is one aspect of effectively improving the mainland's intelligent manufacturing capabilities." Li Qiuming, senior experimentalist at the School of Control Engineering at Northeastern University Qinhuangdao, said.
With the strong support and continuous encouragement of the state, the use of digital technology to improve intelligent manufacturing capabilities will be the direction of gradual exploration by enterprises in the future. "If we can introduce artificial intelligence technology zone to assist in management in the future, it will be a better development direction." Li Haitao said.
According to the 2022 Beijing Smart Factory and Digital Workshop Public List, Beijing Yizhuang ranked first in the number of factories and workshops on the list. Among them, there are 16 intelligent factories including Beijing Benz Automotive Co., Ltd.'s high-end passenger car manufacturing intelligent factory, Xiaomi Communication Technology Co., Ltd.'s consumer electronics intelligent factory for highly flexible manufacturing, and 15 digital workshops such as Grammer Automotive Interior Parts (Beijing) Co., Ltd.'s high-end car interior parts processing digital workshop, and Beijing BAIC Molding Technology Co., Ltd. automotive bumper intelligent production digital workshop. Bayer's digital workshop for aspirin production is one of the plants on the list.
In order to support the development of intelligent manufacturing industry, Beijing Yizhuang has given strong support and guarantee in the process of building a leading robot industry cluster in China and an innovative application highland for advanced intelligent equipment industry clusters. It is estimated that by 2025, the total scale of Beijing Yizhuang robot and intelligent manufacturing industrial cluster will exceed 100 billion yuan.
Source: Zhonggong.com