Less Unnecessary Rejects Thanks To Automated Inspection

Since 1888, CDM Lavoisier has operated as a family-owned business and is a leader in the manufacturing of injectable drugs. To date, the pharmaceutical manufacturer had been working with a combination of automated and manual inspection. Accordingly, one of the requirements of the new system was its capability to execute the previous manual inspection steps fully automatically, i.e. cosmetic defects like the so-called black spots originating from the ampoule closing process, as well as non-moving particles within the containers.

Since many different parameters such as viscosity, density, fill volumes or the presence of bubbles can affect process performance, it was crucial to evaluate the performance of the system based on a wide range of process parameters and solution properties in order to qualify a robust and consistent visual inspection process. Once this challenge was overcome, a large variety of inspection recipes had to be implemented and fast changeovers ensured for some 30 different products in four packaging formats.

With installation of the AIM 3000 from Syntegon Technology they were able to fully automate its inspection process for injectable glass ampoules, allowing it to remove manual inspection steps.