How does automated tonnage gel production work?
In this production we make gels for ultrasound, ECG and other mass products. Now the largest load falls on Blefarogel 1 and Blefarogel 2, which are used in the prevention and treatment of dry eye syndrome. Probably, for that, you have to say thank you to the programmers.
First stage: swelling of the gel, which serves as the basis for the formula. It (depending on the substance being synthesized) can last for several hours or days. And almost the final looks like this:
If the past of small-scale almost manual production was interesting by the process of working with the gel, then this is semi-automated - by the way we organized the process.
For starters, about ten years ago, it was necessary to make the line work. We set up and calibrated it for about two months.
The production consists of five main parts:
- Water purification (using multi-stage purification from conventional filters to reverse osmosis membranes).
- Production directly gels (what will be in tubes or other containers) and control.
- Packing in a container, sealing, control, sticking a label, packing in a box with instructions, packing in a shipping box.
- Laboratory control of raw materials and final products.
I'll start a little from the middle, because the most interesting thing is packing the gel:
It works like this:
On the circle come the bottles on the right, and the top comes gel. On the first stroke, the bottle is filled with gel, then supplied with a lid, then the sensor checks the presence of the dispenser cap on the bottle, then a second lid (already sealing) is put, another sensor to check - and the bottle leaves for pasting with a label.
Here are the covers larger:
Sensor larger:
The bottle is then leveled for precise labeling. Our tolerance is now about a millimeter, but in order for everything to work properly, it was necessary to complete a couple of line improvements by our own production engineers:
The domestic manufacturer’s line is very good (no comparison with China), but since high accuracy is required and there are a lot of moving parts in it, plus a gel or liquid constantly goes, of course, you need to follow it. Something can be corrected quickly, something needs calibration, and something needs to be redone during preventive production stops. For example, here the vibrations are reduced by a coupler:
And here the return mechanism sometimes does not fully return - a temporary insurance is made before the node is overloaded:
An engineer sits directly on the line to catch a possible deflection.
Engineer Alexander Senokosov. In production for 10 years. For him, the line noise is like a subtle symphony, from where he can catch the sound of the incorrect operation of any node.
Then this wonderful node works:
As you can see, the blanks come from above for the boxes:
Then a volume box is made up of them — it will be the target for the next node. Bottles with gel will be “bullets” - they are put into the box from the instruction folded with the letter P, and then “shot” into the box so that the instruction wraps the bottle on both sides. Then the box is closed, and the expiration date (that is, the packing date as a matter of fact) and other technical data are put on it.
And then the box:
Sounds simple, but the devil is in the details. If the packaging-packaging is all relatively engineering and it is about manipulating standard production facilities, then at the stage of synthesis it is pure biochemistry. By the way, since our substances require very precise working conditions, we maintain a strict temperature regime (for example, the same packing of raw materials with an deviation of a couple of degrees can give an imbalance in the formula), humidity is maintained, the air is cleaned in several ways. Another feature of chemical production is monitoring that there are no contaminants introduced - only special clothing, safety shoes. Employees in the city can be distinguished quite simply: they rarely wear long hair and bangs - they are too difficult to remove under the cap, so after a maximum of a couple of years of work, they simply change their hairstyle.
Each node in the production is removed by HD cameras. It is necessary for quality control (if there is an imbalance in the formula - you need to understand what it was), plus the specialists are watching that the norms are not violated. For example, if once an employee goes into production without a protective hat - severe reprimand, the second time (no matter how many years) - dismissal.
The reason for the severity is still in our policy of working with marriage. When someone from the pharmacy reports a marriage (the buyer complains or something else), we withdraw the entire batch for review. And without question, we change to the right one. There were several such cases, mostly false alarms. But twice there was a marriage - for example, 9 years ago the environment was clearly disrupted due to the error of a specialist in production.
Blepharogels are made exclusively in vacuum reactors. In vacuum reactors under the vacuum fall all the components - both raw materials and water. This is due to the fact that we produce eye gel. Gels and any other products that are applied to the skin of the eyelids have more stringent requirements for production than products for the skin as a whole. Vacuum reactors are used in pharmaceutical production, and we have been using exactly such reactors for 15 years:
But we got to the old bioreactors. Such reactors were used in production 15 years ago, and now we run them exclusively for internal scientific experiments and research:
But glass canned reactors - we use them very rarely, about once a year for certain formulas:
Returning to hygiene issues. All production tanks and tools, including the working form, are washed and disinfected in a special room. Regulations require very careful to sanitary norms.
The arriving barrels are washed in these cells in the airlock between the warehouse and the clean area:
Water and other raw materials are controlled at the entrance and during the synthesis. And as sensors on reactors or tanks:
So (selectively) external sensors:
For example, for water, we check the electrical conductivity - there is at least some movement of ions, which means that it is not completely purified (distilled water is a dielectric).
Another feature of accounting products in stock is seriality. If in a regular warehouse and in an ordinary ERP all the raw materials and all products of the same name are interchangeable, then everything is taken into account in our production and supply series:
It is necessary to track incidents and accurately control the expiration date. The fact is that if we ship something from the warehouse to the pharmacy with a shelf life of more than 20%, the pharmacy will not take it simply (it has the right to return as a marriage contract), so we keep very accurate accounting and scheduling .
Well, the results of the work are already in the office with a showcase:
First stage: swelling of the gel, which serves as the basis for the formula. It (depending on the substance being synthesized) can last for several hours or days. And almost the final looks like this:
If the past of small-scale almost manual production was interesting by the process of working with the gel, then this is semi-automated - by the way we organized the process.
For starters, about ten years ago, it was necessary to make the line work. We set up and calibrated it for about two months.
The production consists of five main parts:
- Water purification (using multi-stage purification from conventional filters to reverse osmosis membranes).
- Production directly gels (what will be in tubes or other containers) and control.
- Packing in a container, sealing, control, sticking a label, packing in a box with instructions, packing in a shipping box.
- Laboratory control of raw materials and final products.
I'll start a little from the middle, because the most interesting thing is packing the gel:
It works like this:
On the circle come the bottles on the right, and the top comes gel. On the first stroke, the bottle is filled with gel, then supplied with a lid, then the sensor checks the presence of the dispenser cap on the bottle, then a second lid (already sealing) is put, another sensor to check - and the bottle leaves for pasting with a label.
Here are the covers larger:
Sensor larger:
The bottle is then leveled for precise labeling. Our tolerance is now about a millimeter, but in order for everything to work properly, it was necessary to complete a couple of line improvements by our own production engineers:
The domestic manufacturer’s line is very good (no comparison with China), but since high accuracy is required and there are a lot of moving parts in it, plus a gel or liquid constantly goes, of course, you need to follow it. Something can be corrected quickly, something needs calibration, and something needs to be redone during preventive production stops. For example, here the vibrations are reduced by a coupler:
And here the return mechanism sometimes does not fully return - a temporary insurance is made before the node is overloaded:
An engineer sits directly on the line to catch a possible deflection.
Engineer Alexander Senokosov. In production for 10 years. For him, the line noise is like a subtle symphony, from where he can catch the sound of the incorrect operation of any node.
Then this wonderful node works:
As you can see, the blanks come from above for the boxes:
Then a volume box is made up of them — it will be the target for the next node. Bottles with gel will be “bullets” - they are put into the box from the instruction folded with the letter P, and then “shot” into the box so that the instruction wraps the bottle on both sides. Then the box is closed, and the expiration date (that is, the packing date as a matter of fact) and other technical data are put on it.
And then the box:
Sounds simple, but the devil is in the details. If the packaging-packaging is all relatively engineering and it is about manipulating standard production facilities, then at the stage of synthesis it is pure biochemistry. By the way, since our substances require very precise working conditions, we maintain a strict temperature regime (for example, the same packing of raw materials with an deviation of a couple of degrees can give an imbalance in the formula), humidity is maintained, the air is cleaned in several ways. Another feature of chemical production is monitoring that there are no contaminants introduced - only special clothing, safety shoes. Employees in the city can be distinguished quite simply: they rarely wear long hair and bangs - they are too difficult to remove under the cap, so after a maximum of a couple of years of work, they simply change their hairstyle.
Each node in the production is removed by HD cameras. It is necessary for quality control (if there is an imbalance in the formula - you need to understand what it was), plus the specialists are watching that the norms are not violated. For example, if once an employee goes into production without a protective hat - severe reprimand, the second time (no matter how many years) - dismissal.
The reason for the severity is still in our policy of working with marriage. When someone from the pharmacy reports a marriage (the buyer complains or something else), we withdraw the entire batch for review. And without question, we change to the right one. There were several such cases, mostly false alarms. But twice there was a marriage - for example, 9 years ago the environment was clearly disrupted due to the error of a specialist in production.
Blepharogels are made exclusively in vacuum reactors. In vacuum reactors under the vacuum fall all the components - both raw materials and water. This is due to the fact that we produce eye gel. Gels and any other products that are applied to the skin of the eyelids have more stringent requirements for production than products for the skin as a whole. Vacuum reactors are used in pharmaceutical production, and we have been using exactly such reactors for 15 years:
But we got to the old bioreactors. Such reactors were used in production 15 years ago, and now we run them exclusively for internal scientific experiments and research:
But glass canned reactors - we use them very rarely, about once a year for certain formulas:
Returning to hygiene issues. All production tanks and tools, including the working form, are washed and disinfected in a special room. Regulations require very careful to sanitary norms.
The arriving barrels are washed in these cells in the airlock between the warehouse and the clean area:
Water and other raw materials are controlled at the entrance and during the synthesis. And as sensors on reactors or tanks:
So (selectively) external sensors:
For example, for water, we check the electrical conductivity - there is at least some movement of ions, which means that it is not completely purified (distilled water is a dielectric).
Another feature of accounting products in stock is seriality. If in a regular warehouse and in an ordinary ERP all the raw materials and all products of the same name are interchangeable, then everything is taken into account in our production and supply series:
It is necessary to track incidents and accurately control the expiration date. The fact is that if we ship something from the warehouse to the pharmacy with a shelf life of more than 20%, the pharmacy will not take it simply (it has the right to return as a marriage contract), so we keep very accurate accounting and scheduling .
Well, the results of the work are already in the office with a showcase:
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