WILCO Manufactures the First Fully Automatic Final Quality Machine Concept, Combining Several Inspection Technologies on One Common Machine Platform

WILCO of Switzerland has designed, manufactured and installed the first final quality machine, where several inspection technologies are installed within a common machine platform.

This unique machine design was manufactured for high speed inspection of lyo vials, utilising a NIR-based direct moisture measurement of the lyo cake; a laser-based oxygen measurement of the headspace; a laser-based absolute pressure measurement of the headspace; a 2D matrix code printer and a camera based print code verification.

Operation

The vials are automatically and continuously transferred from an in-feed buffer system over the bottom-mounted NIR sensor and through both stationary mounted laser heads.

Vials passing the NIR and both the oxygen and pressure measurement are printed with a configurable 2D matrix code, which is immediately verified by a code-reading camera system.

Vials not meeting either the NIR measurement, the headspace analysis measurements or the camera code reading verification are fully automatically removed and placed into separate reject trays. Only good tested vials are collected in a separate out-feed tray or continue on in-line.

Key features:

• Complete final quality declaration of pharmaceutical products
• Cost savings and footprint reduction by combining several inspection technologies on one common machine platform
• Risk of glass breakage greatly reduced due to direct product transfer within one common machine platform
• One supplier – one main contact – one project management for all technologies
• Test capacities of up to 600 products per minute
• Combinable also with X-Ray based particle detection and/or camera based cosmetic inspection
• Can be instrumental to meet EU guidelines to Good Manufacturing Practice, Annex 1
• Operation stand-alone or in-line, connected to, for example, a labeller

This development and the wide range of available leak detection and inspection technologies, makes WILCO the "one stop" company when it comes to any inspection requirement.