Pharmaceutical Oral Solid Dose Project
Toby Varner | Project Manager | Huffman Engineering
It’s a business model that often is overlooked, although not by some of the dominant consumer health corporations in the world. Room to grow – and not just up but out. So, it wasn’t surprising when the vast green pastures of Nebraska would ultimately play a big role in landing one of the largest pharmaceutical opportunities to come our way in some time. In 2018 when an international pharmaceutical company acquired a new company, executives wanted to determine where they should put their effort and money for a new production line for an oral solid dose consumer health product or tablet intended to ease the woes of an aging population.
Background
This global pharmaceutical company was simultaneously working to strengthen their tablet-producing product line and consolidate manufacturing and packaging operations and announced they would be closing one of their plants and moving operations of one of their biggest producing products.
Product brand improvements during the re-location included SKU rationalization to reduce the number of product varieties worldwide, reformulation to reduce the total number of raw material ingredients and the conversion from a bi-layer tablet to a single layer tablet.
This particular product, considered a “Power Brand” within this pharmaceutical organization, estimated the new location would produce more than 1 billion doses per year, serving the North and South American markets.
An unengaged workforce and a closed-in, physical footprint in another geographical location, not conducive to the expansion of their consumer health division, caused the corporation to visit Lincoln, Nebraska. The sprawling 160-acre campus was not yet fully utilized. Lincoln was the facility chosen to house and manufacture the new product.
The legacy system was aged and temperamental and for this product, representing 75-85% of their output, the equipment was just not holding up. Ultimately, the hybrid project would entail moving two packaging lines and designing, engineering and building a brand-new manufacturing line that previously was not well documented and could not handle their aggressive production goals. The beginning stages of information gathering became a challenge as onsite operators recognized relocation of this production line.
“The execution side from our end, especially when you’re talking 8-10 in-house engineers, collaborating with daily stand-up meetings and a tight deadline to make sure we were all moving in the same direction was a challenge within itself. We are proud to have accomplished with a high degree of professionalism, efficiency and effectiveness.”
Keith Mandachit, PE
Engineering Manager
That environment meant our engineers focused on design without a concept of how things were currently operating. This proved to be an impressive obstacle when contemplating moving production across the country to re-establish production in a completely new site. What Huffman Engineering did know was their current gold-standard for their production was housed in Ireland.
Design, engineering and fabrication went along at a record pace from an engineering standpoint and this project became the most integrated system Huffman Engineering had implemented utilizing the Rockwell Software family of products and Rockwell’s Integrated Architecture.
Technical Know-How
This particular project required extensive design and programming capabilities from Huffman Engineering’s experienced engineering team and process improvements included two separate phases:
- All new PLC and HMI design and programming on the manufacturing side, effectively segmenting the network and providing redundant servers including hardware, software and equipment
- The re-design and re-location of the packaging side
By the Numbers
1 batch | 19 ingredients |
1 batch of tablet granulation | 1200 KG +/- 1.5% |
1 batch of tablet granulation | 444,444 tablets (approx.) |
Production per day – current | 18 batches/day |
Production per day – capability | 24 batches/day |
This Design Included:
- Controlling the dispense of raw materials using loss-in-weight technology
- Capturing and tracking data on raw material usage per batch to assure quality
- Implementing a batch system to allow multiple recipes for various products
- Engineering to facilitate better material flow
- Designing a new bar code scanning system allowing operators to cue up manufacturing batches in a way that reduces human error
- Improving the data integrity of the system for capturing weights
- Consolidating multiple batch reports to reflect the entire manufacturing status
This project collectively was the most integrated Rockwell Software project to date including the following software components.
Software Components:
- FactoryTalk Batch
- FactoryTalk Historian
- FactoryTalk View ME
- FactoryTalk View SE
- FactoryTalk VantagePoint
- FactoryTalk Directory
- ThinManager
Hardware Components:
- Control Logix PLC Platform & IO
- Control Logix Loss in Weight Feed Controllers
- FactoryTalk Historian ME (Hardware Historian)
- Softing Transaction Manager (Hardware Data Collector)
- Machine Safety IO
- Bar Code Scanners & Printers
- Motor Control Centers
- Ethernet IP
- Stratix Network Switches
- Weigh Scales
“The execution side from our end, especially when you’re talking 8-10 in-house engineers, collaborating with daily stand-up meetings and a tight deadline to make sure we were all moving in the same direction was a challenge within itself. We are proud to have accomplished with a high degree of professionalism, efficiency and effectiveness“I think the iterative nature of the concept paired with collaboration of the mechanical design and customer feedback is really fun.”
Toby Varner, PMP
Project Manager
A shift in the Gold Standard:
As the project was coming to a close, in the testing phase, the corporations started hearing Lincoln, Nebraska may not be the place to house this production facility, so the corporation flew in 30 corporate executives from Europe during the testing phase. Several presentations were made sharing the details of this complicated project and then it was opened for questions.
Huffman Project Manager Toby Varner presented on behalf of Huffman Engineering about the electrical controls design and installation. He shared about using a Loss in Weight (LIW) feeder system to detect if any one or batch of tablets were lower in substance when an executive inquired about the wisdom of using that system and an automated calculated rate. Believing our automation techniques would save them endless time and contribute to the aggressive production goals they desired, Varner explained our reasoning. The automation Varner was able to describe for adjustment became the new gold-standard replacing a manual process commonly used in their European plant.
Huffman Engineering’s innovative and creative automation revelation not only allowed the company to exceed targeted production goals but had a significant impact on their bottom line from both the production and a personnel standpoint.
Results
Not only was this project exciting from the standpoint of the geographical re-location across the country, but for the impressive results both to production and the bottom line including:
- Reduced manpower requirements for operating the tablet manufacturing area
- Reduced manual paperwork required bringing the system closer to a paperless manufacturing area
- Reduced chances for human error
- Reduced manual operations
Key Results
Savings $500K+
Production 2 Billion Tablets/Year 2x Goal
2.5 Million tablets/ Single Cycle
The use of an automated calculated rate for a system paid off in dividends with conservative estimates saving them almost ½ Million dollars.
Planned Quantity of Production was 2 billion tablets a year – twice that of the target goal
The pharmaceutical company is netting 2.5 million tablets in a single cycle
One of the key quality attributes for this global pharmaceutical company is blend dispersion and at the conclusion of the project their blend dispersion was off the charts, producing 100 times better than their European counterpart.
In fact, the entire system was so successful, now the vast green pastures of Lincoln, Nebraska are the new gold standard in manufacturing and production for this pharmaceutical corporations consumer health division.
“There’s something particularly pleasing about being able to walk into a room and see the entire process: raw material to finished product. Then to realize that I played a part in creating that product which I can find on the shelf at my grandmother’s house.“
NIck Hein
Mechanical Engineer
Named 2022 System Integrator of the Year, Huffman Engineering, Inc. has over three decades of experience with a proven track record of delivering large-scale system integration projects with industrial customers and municipalities as an electrical control systems integrator and electrical engineering firm with offices in Lincoln, Nebraska and Englewood, Colorado. We specialize in start to finish engineering projects in pharmaceuticals, water/wastewater/, food and beverage, electrical utilities and manufacturing. Our system integration expertise extends to highly regulated industries requiring clients to meet stringent regulatory requirements. Huffman Engineering can design and build robust and reliable automation systems to meet the expectations of the CDPHE, FDA, USDA and EPA.