Minimize Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals And Improve Plant Performance
Pharmaceutical companies must be concerned with plant performance while maintaining quality. Major medicine manufacturer Nattermann & Cie explains how a METTLER TOLEDO Hi-Speed XMV reliably marks and verifies products in one complete system.
Major medicine manufacturer, Nattermann explains how this system has helped mark and verify a wide variety of products.
As the number of counterfeit medicines in circulation on the market is on the rise, reliability and quality management in the pharmaceuticals industry faces new challenges, Nattermann & Cie. GmbH mainly manufactures medicines for self-medication to relieve pain, fevers and cold symptoms. Using the Mark and Vision System from METTLER TOLEDO Hi-Speed, Nattermann reliably labels and verifies products in one complete system. Nattermann is a member of the Sanofi Aventis group with more than 400 employees. The most well known products include the cough mixture Bronchicum®, the liver protection preparation Essentiale®, and the pain killer Doliprane® manufactured for the French market.
National and international standards
The company currently manufactures more than 100 million packages a year and its products are sold in over 60 countries. National and international guidelines require more reliable marking solutions. "We are driving forward projects at a national and international level to identify and serialize pharmaceutical products to fight counterfeit medicines," explains Friedhelm Hermanni. As Manager of Engineering Packaging at Nattermann, Mr. Hermanni is responsible for developing the marking and packaging processes for medicines.
"The results of the EFPIA pilot project in Sweden, the E-Pedigree initiative in the US and the implementation of national solutions in Turkey, France and other countries are of increasing importance to us and require a more reliable Mark & Vision solution at Nattermann", continued Hermanni.
The XMV system delivers clear result
The modern Mark & Vision solution XMV from METTLER TOLEDO Hi-Speed marks, verifies and sorts the medicines produced by Nattermann. This is instrumental in tracking every single medicine package. The XMV system ensures optimum printing of unique sequences of numbers or data matrix barcodes on cardboard boxes, thereby providing a clearly legible imprint with a brilliant result.
The XMV system at Natterman runs with a throughput of 150 cardboard boxes a minute. The correctness and legibility of the printed product codes are verified using an integrated vision system. Illegible and incorrectly marked boxes are detected immediately and removed automatically from the product flow using an airjet. The XMV system can be easily integrated into new and existing production lines in both automated lines and manual packaging processes. At Nattermann this marking and vision solution is integrated downstream of the checkweigher. The Hi-Speed S2 checkweigher removes products of incorrect weight in good time before the marking process, thus preventing any products of the wrong weight from being marked for no reason.