In the 100,000-level clean workshop, I am holding a particle counter to test the newly launched pharmaceutical packaging machine. The conveyor belt of this equipment has just completed plasma sterilization, and there is still a faint smell of hydrogen peroxide in the air. "Mr. Li, calibrate the parallelism of this set of molds by 0.02 mm." I turned around and told my apprentice. Outside the glass observation window, the quality inspector of the pharmaceutical factory was holding a record book waiting for acceptance-this is the 8th GMP certified pharmaceutical packaging machine we delivered this year.
I remember that three years ago, when we were renovating the blister packaging line for a pharmaceutical factory in Northeast China, their technical supervisor Lao Zhou raised a difficult question: "The heat sealing qualification rate of aluminum-plastic packaging is always stuck at around 92%." Our team stayed in the workshop for 72 hours and finally found that there was a 3°C temperature difference in the mold temperature field. Now this third-generation pharmaceutical packaging machine is equipped with an infrared temperature control system, which can control the temperature fluctuation in the heat sealing area within ±0.5°C. The combination of aluminum foil and PVC board is as smooth as an ironed shirt collar.
Last month, when I went to Jiangsu to inspect the equipment, Director Zhang of the pharmaceutical factory took me to see their intelligent pharmaceutical equipment central control screen. The real-time data of 20 of our pharmaceutical packaging machines jumped on the screen. When the mold pressure of a certain equipment was abnormal, the system automatically pushed maintenance instructions. "In the past, three engineers took turns to inspect, but now the equipment will 'scream in pain' by itself." When Lao Zhang spoke, the equipment was outputting roxithromycin blister packaging at a speed of 120 boards per minute, and the molding depth of each blister eye seemed to have been measured with a vernier caliper.
Cleanliness control of pharmaceutical packaging machines is a life-or-death situation. Last year, we customized equipment for a vaccine manufacturer, and we embedded a three-stage filter device in the air supply system. On the day of equipment acceptance, the customer was shaking with his hands holding the sedimentation bacteria test report: "It can still meet the static cleanliness requirements in a dynamic environment. Your laminar flow design is amazing!" Now on their new crown vaccine production line, the cleanliness of the core area of the pharmaceutical packaging machine is always maintained at ISO5 level.
The pharmaceutical blister packaging unit that is being debugged recently has an innovative design-a mold quick change system. The day before yesterday, a pharmaceutical company in North China urgently switched to producing children's medicines. Our engineers used video to guide operators to replace molds. It took only 23 minutes from disassembly to resuming production. "This set of positioning pins is more convenient than German equipment." The equipment section chief sighed on the phone. What surprised him even more was that the cooling water channel of the new mold has its own error-proof structure, so there is no need to worry about apprentices connecting the water pipe in reverse.
The intelligent upgrade of pharmaceutical packaging machines is changing the industry ecology. When I attended an industry forum last week, several heads of listed pharmaceutical companies surrounded me and asked, "I heard that the equipment you made for a factory in the southwest can automatically identify missing tablets on the drug board?" I smiled and took out my mobile phone to show them the real-time picture of the equipment's visual inspection system - when a vitamin tablet was missing from a board, the robot instantly moved it out of the production line, and the whole process was half a beat faster than a human blinking.
Master Wang, who has been working in the workshop for 20 years, has a catchphrase: "The temper of the pharmaceutical packaging machine is harder to figure out than a new bride." But since we introduced digital twin technology, the debugging cycle of new equipment has been shortened by 40%. When installing equipment for a traditional Chinese medicine factory in South China last quarter, the engineer first simulated three months of production data in a virtual environment, and the actual yield on the first day of production reached 98.7%. Looking at the jumping parameters on the monitoring screen, the old master muttered: "Why do young people debug equipment nowadays like playing games?"
During night shift inspections, I always like to stay in front of the touch screen of the pharmaceutical packaging machine for a while. Those jumping pressure curves and temperature waveforms record the evolution of China's pharmaceutical equipment. At three o'clock in the morning, when the equipment automatically executes the CIP cleaning procedure, what flows on the stainless steel pipes is not only the cleaning agent, but also the obsession and expectation of our group of technical workers for "Made in China".
