Project description
Robots take position on pharmaceutical filling lines
The increasing demand for pharmaceutical products has driven the industry to continuous technological innovation. The EU-funded Aseptic Smart project will demonstrate robotised filling lines capable of processing several container forms. This allows fast changeovers providing manufacturing flexibility and agility that are essential in the processing of smaller batches of more personalised injectable medicines. Robots eliminate human intervention in the aseptic area, offering sterility assurance and reducing contamination risk, while the modular and standard design of machines permits cheaper and faster scaling out during production. The project will process the robot gripping system, integrate robots into machines, and develop machine vision and control systems before validation and demonstration in a real environment.
Objective
"Aseptic Smart will demonstrate a novel fully robotised, multifunctional pharmaceutical filling line with capabilities of processing several container types (vials, syringes, cartridges, ampoules, etc.) and thus bringing the sector to the fore of Industry 4.0 revolution, which is the future of manufacturing in Europe. The technology enables fast changeovers ( 30 minutes) thus providing manufacturing flexibility and agility critical in processing smaller batches of more personalised injectable medicines. Robots eliminate the need for human intervention in aseptic area and thus solve two traditional challenges within the pharma industry-sterility assurance and contamination risk reduction. Machines have a modular design which allows cheaper and faster scaling out through addition of more modules where production increase is required and reduces technology transfer costs by 94%. The technology has the following additional advantages#58;58% lower operational costs - ca. 87% less parts reduce maintenance costs and energy consumption;Compact – up to 50% smaller size as robots replace bulky material movement components e.g. conveyor belts delivering manufacturing space savings;Increased process repeatability – robots reduce rejection rates to virtually zero (less than 0.05%)Because of this, the technology has attracted interest of some large pharma companies who, like several others, are shifting from developing quot;blockbusterquot; drugs towards personalised medicine; driving growth of the €6.6 billion global pharma packaging equipment market. The project will refine robot gripping system, integrate machines to robots, develop machine vision and control system before validation and end user demonstration in actual environment. This will support fast commercialisation enabling the consortium to capture 1.5% of the market 5 years after commercialisation, translating to cumulative consortium revenue of over earn cumulative revenues of €97m and return on investment of 696%."
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencecomputer vision
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical transitionsrevolutions
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespersonalized medicine
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringrobotics
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
53100 Siena
Italy