Conveyors for Pharmaceutical Applications

At Industrial Kinetics, we specialize in manufacturing custom conveyors for the pharmaceutical industry. Our engineering team can design a medical conveyor system specifically designed for a customer’s needs.

Customers are looking for easy to clean equipment to maintain a sterile environment and Industrial Kinetics delivers.

Track and trace requirements for the pharmaceutical supply chain have been defined in the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) which is part of the Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA), that was enacted by Congress on November 27, 2013.  Manufacturers have until November 2018 to integrate track, trace, and serialization systems in the manufacturing process. Serialization involves assigning a unique and verifiable product number to the smallest unit of sale. Track is the ability to maintain and retrieve a history of current and past locations of that serialized product.  Trace is the ability to maintain and retrieve the history of who came in contact with the serialized product as it moved through the supply chain.

Pharmaceutical Conveyor Types

Belt Conveyors

The flat belt can accommodate a wide variety of load types including totes, cardboard cartons, and creates. Belt conveyors are capable of moving loads over a long distance with a single motor. These are common in material handling applications since they are reliable, economical, and rely on a simple design.

Coding Conveyors

A coding conveyor is an innovative labeling machine that applies barcodes to cases, verifies the barcode presence and readability, verifies the barcode value, and prints human readable dot matrix text on the case. The approach to case labeling satisfies many distribution and customer facility requirements for distribution systems. One of the benefits that manufacturers see from these features is the reduction of inventory in pre-printed customer or product specific cases. The applied barcode labels are verified against the "taught" label to ensure that labels are present and readable and the correct value to avoid a case reject.

Accumulation Conveyor

Accumulation conveyors are powered roller conveyors that allow loads to accumulate without causing pressure from the backed-up loads. The two types of accumulating conveyors are low pressure and zero pressure. The purpose of accumulation conveyors is to control the flow of medical product loads throughout a conveyor system. Another common use of the accumulating conveyor is for controlling the flow of loads to a sorter or robotic palletizer.

Box Palletizer

Box palletizer eliminates the time consuming and expensive manual method of removing boxes from a conveyor line and placing them on a pallet. Using a robotic arm, the palletizer can quickly pick and place items such as cartons. In addition to robotic palletizers, there are also low-level palletizers that interface with floor level conveyors as well as high level palletizers that accept loads for the pallet at a level higher than the fully loaded pallet.

Commercial Distribution Systems for Medical Industry

Experience counts and Industrial Kinetics has it in the area of implementing commercial medical conveyor systems for the specific needs of the pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing industry. Your company’s specific needs such as maintaining SKU integrity and accurate sequencing of product in and out will be met.

One example of our engineering teams innovative approach to a pharmaceutical manufacturer’s manufacturing process was to design an autoclave loading and unloading system. The sterilization process and chemicals are corrosive to much of a typical conveying system. The customer was provided with a system that loads and unloads the autoclave using a mole or trolley to transport the product in and out of the sterilization chamber. The only structure exposed to the harsh environment of the autoclave are the stainless steel rails that support the trolley. When the sterilization process takes place, the parts transporting trolley is outside the autoclave.

To learn more about our medical conveyors systems for the pharmaceutical industry and what we can do for your company, contact an Industrial Kinetics customer service representative by phone or online today.

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