Checkweighers Improve Sanofi-Aventis Vial Production

Sanofi-Aventis is the global leader in core medical areas. In the Injectables Division, where liquid drugs such as different types of insulin or drugs for emergency medicine are produced, the packaged medical compounds are subjected to final checks using a dynamic checkweigher. The XS2 checkweigher separates packages with missing or empty vials at very high line speeds. The smallest vial has a net capacity of just 1 ml with a fill weight of 1 gram. Over 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 0.3 grams.

As the weight of all the individual package components can vary from batch to batch, the "gliding limits" function is used to take these fluctuations in weight 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. Long-term tare fluctuations can therefore be compensated 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.