Syntegon pioneers robotics in top load cartoners and AI-enhanced pharma visual inspection system

03 Feb 2021 --- Syntegon is investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics to enhance its packaging production line efficiencies. 

The company has expanded its secondary packaging portfolio with the Sigpack TTMD, which combines core technologies of the TTM platform for top load cartoners with integrated Delta robot cells.

“The TTMD allows manufacturers high flexibility for different products and pack styles,” Michael Haas, Syntegon’s product manager for secondary packaging, tells PackagingInsights.

“Products can be processed in random order from various infeed sources from either vertical or horizontal pre-processes.” 

In a separate move, the packaging technology provider has also installed what it calls the first fully validated visual inspection system utilizing AI in an automated inspection machine. 

The move allows Syntegon to explore “largely uncharted territory in the pharmaceutical industry.”

Syntegon has more than 40 years experience in the development of automated visual inspection machines.

The robotic solution’s camera-based vision control system detects products on the infeed belt.“Automation has already been a topic before the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Haas. 

“However, the pandemic reinforced the need for automation to keep operator and product contact to a strict minimum.”

The D stands for Delta
The Sigpack TTMD’s camera-based vision control system detects products on the infeed belt. 

The system can typically identify 60 to 90 products per minute and can go up to as many as 120 products per minute.

The Sigpack TTMD uses the proven tool-less format changeover concept from the TTM platform, enabling a vertical restart after each format change. 

“Moreover, it is possible to process assortments and variety packs on the TTMD cartoner. This is a future proof concept and will give manufacturers greater freedom in terms of product offerings,” explains Haas.

Syntegon indicates the first Sigpack TTMD has already been purchased, with further inquiries currently being processed.

Syntegon has more than 40 years experience in the development of automated visual inspection machines.Packaging format flexibility
As an alternative to human operators, entry-level robots for feeding and loading, as well as cobots for palletizing, present an innovative operational method to avoid contact between employees and products, increasingly useful during ongoing COVID-19 worker restrictions.

The robotic solution’s camera-based vision control system detects products on the infeed belt. “The TTMD therefore helps to quickly compile products for assortment or variety packs, adding flexibility to packaging formats,” Haas explains.

In terms of energy efficiency, Haas says the TTM platform is subject to continuous improvement. 

“Syntegon puts a lot of effort into making machines more energy efficient, flexible and operator-friendly. The TTMD is no exception to this principle.”

AI in pharma: Avoiding costly false rejects 
As one of the most challenging stages in the pharmaceutical manufacturing process, inspection requires ever more sophisticated visual systems to process increasingly complex products.

“Especially for high-cost pharmaceuticals, every single false reject is one too many,” says Dr. José Zanardi, responsible for vision inspection development and applications at Syntegon. 

AI applications can help increase detection rates and decrease false rejects in difficult products like highly viscous parenteral solutions with air bubbles, which are sometimes hard to differentiate from harmful particles. 

Syntegon has installed its first AI-equipped visual inspection system in a fully automated machine.First customer adoption
Syntegon recently installed its first AI-equipped visual inspection system in a fully automated and validated machine in biotechnology company Amgen’s production line. 

Amgen uses the system to reliably distinguish air bubbles at the syringe’s rubber stopper from foreign particles, where conventional vision technology often mistakenly identifies safe products containing bubbles as defective. 

In this customer project, Syntegon’s AI-based vision system was able to increase the particle detection rate by 70 percent, while reducing the false detection rate by 60 percent (average values in a particular inspection station). 

“We are very happy our new technology is able to contribute to higher safety and production efficiency of injectable drugs,” Zanardi says. 

Syntegon aims to implement AI in further inspection machines for different products and container types.

By Anni Schleicher