Conveyor has a gentle touch for phamaceuticals

Contax has been working with world leading pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to significantly improve packaging processes on one line in its UK operations.

Production automation system specialist Contax has been working with world leading pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to significantly improve packaging processes on one line in its UK operations.

Contax proposed the installation of its specialist Shuttleworth conveyor.

The result has enabled an improvement in productivity, while also maintaining the quality of the packaging itself.

Paul Corbishley, Plant Engineer, UK Operations Packaging at AstraZeneca UK, explains: "The pharmaceutical product manufactured on this line is shipped to Japan, where they demand very high quality standards".

"The product will not be accepted if there is any marking or damage to the packaging".

He continued: "In examining all our processes we discovered that our old conveyor was periodically marking the packs".

"This gave us a two-fold opportunity - address an immediate challenge and look at making overall improvements in productivity".

He added: "We had been using a small manual conveyor that required a full time operator, but by replacing this with a more sophisticated system we could automate the process and free up the operator".

The solution supplied by Contax was its Shuttleworth conveyor.

This uses its patented "slip torque" technology, a patented system designed to reduce product damage.

It is based on polished stainless steel shafts individually powered by flexible belts on a line shaft or by a continuous chain.

These stainless steel shafts are covered with segmented, loose fit rollers, which become the conveyor surface.

It is the weight of the product being conveyed combined with the coefficient of friction between the shafts and the inside diameter of the rollers that provides the driving force.

As the weight of the product increases, there is a corresponding increase in the driving force supplied.

As the products stop, the segmented rollers beneath them also stop, creating very low backpressure accumulation and reducing product damage.

At AstraZeneca, the Shuttleworth conveyor also moves the product down from machine height to operator height, where the line is now split into two, to increase the amount of product available for packing.

The product is removed manually from the conveyor and placed into outer cartons before being taped and weighed.

Continued Corbishley: "This has effectively eliminated a bottleneck in our production, as it enables more product to be transferred off the packing line".

"The Shuttleworth conveyor has reduced the quality issues with our product packaging, and the need for a manually operated conveyor".

"The result is an increase in productivity and efficiency".

"Needless to say, we are very pleased with our decision and the solution recommended by Contax".

"They have understood the requirements, and helped us in making the right choice", he said.

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