CLIENT: Medical Device Company

Overview

One of our clients, a leading medical device manufacturer engaged our service to design the integrated recipe management system with their balloon forming and material handling system. Project required the integration of bar code reader to read the Lot History Record (LHR) and download the appropriate product recipe from the recipe management system. The balloon forming process equipment was control by Allen Bradley Programmable Automation Controller (PAC) with fully integrated 4 axis servo motion control system and colour touch screen Human Machine Interface (HMI). The HMI was capable of storing up to 500 product recipes.

Solution

After the initial project appraisal and review equipment. Our solution consisted of installing 1D/2D bar code reader connected to the DF1 (serial port) on the PLC central processor unit (CPU).

A detailed design and development of bar code reader software module and recipe management module, allowed for the seamless integration of the software into the existing control system strategy. The solution developed, allows the operator to scan the LHR, once scanned the software module searched the recipe database of the appropriate recipe and automatically set-up the equipment with minimal operator intervention.

Throughout all the stages, we worked closely with our client and used their invaluable equipment and process knowledge – the outcome was a combined effort that allowed our client to have an improved ownership and understanding of the integrated recipe management solution.

Outcome

The bar code integrated solution enabled:

1. Reduced equipment set-up time
2. Increase operator productivity
3. Reduce set-up error