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Understanding the packaging line (sidebar)

Prescription Solutions’ pharmacy manager Dave Booher explains that the company’s automated fulfillment packaging line in Carlsbad, CA, stretches 160’ in one direction, makes a 1’-radius turn, and runs right back.

Prescription Solutions' line in Carlsbad, CA, is used to fill prescription drug orders. The line uses about 150 fill stations or
Prescription Solutions' line in Carlsbad, CA, is used to fill prescription drug orders. The line uses about 150 fill stations or

 

McKesson APS-High Volume Solutions-SI/Baker, a division of McKesson, served as the line’s systems integrator. Positioned at different areas throughout the line are five Plus Module fill stations containing 150 cells.

Each station includes a hopper with a counting disk that counts drug tablets or capsules, then releases them into a chute that drops the pills into waiting bottles below. Bottles are automatically labeled at three stations before they proceed along the main packaging line. The pressure-sensitive labels with prescription information are printed at each of these three stations by an Intermec unit.

The five fill stations are mounted to conveyors perpendicular to the main conveyor. Booher describes a bottle’s path on the line as similar to a car trip to run errands where you first enter the freeway, then exit as necessary to pick up what you need, then go back onto the freeway.

Directing bottle traffic on the line is the radio-frequency identification system supplied by RFID, Inc. This system includes dozens of readers mounted at various points under the main conveyor line. Each reader is cabled to an antenna that constantly emits a radio-frequency signal. As a bottle in a puck is conveyed in the proximity of each reader, the RFID chip or tag on the puck responds to the signal of the reader. The tag, a passive device that includes an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (eeprom) chip and a copper coil for an antenna, supplies a number, 123 for example, that correlates to the prescription in the bottle in that puck. That information goes to a host computer that relays instructions to direct the puck downstream.

Videos from Enercon Industries Corp.
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