Aiika
Online inspection is an important component of the packaging process. Especially in case of medicines, one has to be really cautious because even a trivial error may result in serious consequences. One of the major issues faced in the packing of medicines is what the pharmaceutical industry refers to as "mix-ups", that is medicines being packed in a different packaging than the one that is meant for them.
Automatic inspection systems can be used to check the products against the packaging and ensure that there are no mix-ups. But due to the scale of operations in the pharmaceutical industry, this packaging inspection needs to be carried out at great speeds, without compromising on accuracy. Aiika is Propix's answer to this problem faced by the pharmaceutical industry.
"Aiika", which means "checking" in Sanskrit, checks the integrity of every component of the medicine pack, including the blister pack (print on the aluminium foil), the insert (both sides of the informative leaflet) and the outer carton (that carries the blisters and inserts). This camera based inspection tool is hence, a valuable quality assurance tool for the pharmaceutical industry.
Solutions Offered
- Missing leaflets
- Cartons/Leaflets mix up
- Blank leaflets
- Missing color on carton
- Blank/Mixed up blister
- Leaflets with wrong orientation
How It Works
- Two cameras are placed on the leaflet folding machine; one checks the barcode or pharma code on the top of the leaflet and the second checks the barcode on the bottom of the leaflet. If any discrepancies are found, an alarm is raised and the event is remembered by the vision inspection system.
- The third camera, placed on the cartonator, checks the code on the carton of the product.
- In addition to this, the fourth and final camera checks the code on the blister pack to check any kind of discrepancies in the printing of the aluminum foil.
Aiika remembers the event of each defect and a shift register algorithm is activated against each error. The defective pieces are tracked up to the ejecting station and the ejector is activated accordingly, throwing the defective pieces out.
An additional sensor mounted on the machine for "eject verification" ensures that the defective pieces are ejected completely. In case of any failure to do so, the machine is stopped with a buzzer.
Features
This camera based inspection system performs this entire task 'online' at the last stage of packing. It is an advanced automatic inspection system, equipped with facilities like touch screen and an embedded operating system. This vision inspection system is sturdy as well as very compact in size.
Aiika is designed with embedded technology, which is much more reliable and robust as compared to the conventional vision inspection systems working with heavy overloads of operating systems.
This advanced automatic inspection system can accommodate a maximum of 4 cameras. These cameras are tiny components with a great strength of online barcode detection. The tiny size facilitates the camera to fit in the limited space available on the folding machine and the barcode reading strength makes it capable of reading codes at any position, speed and print quality.
One of the most important features of this vision inspection system is that it comes with 3 user levels protected with passwords, which are: Administration, Supervisor and Operator, giving different level of access to persons operating the device.
Aiika is 21CFR Part 11 Compliant.