Dorner conveyors selected for pharmaceutical automation project

Dorner conveyors were recently specified in an unusual project for a pharmaceutical third-party logistics (3PL) provider that offers drug reprocessing for major retail chains and pharmaceutical manufacturers. The drugs handled range from common antibiotics to highly controlled narcotics. This keeps their facility and processes under the watchful eye of the food and drug authorities to ensure that the products are properly tracked and routed to the correct destination for destruction or return to manufacturer.

Using manual processes, the customer was constrained to processing no more than 2200 cases of drugs per day. Shipments often arrive by the truckload, whereupon hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilos of varying size cartons weighing up to 25kg are offloaded into a secure processing area. Due to solid business growth, the customer wanted to handle larger volumes without relocating or significantly remodelling its facility.

Dorner's conveyor design team worked with the customer to engineer a design that would work within these constraints and yet fully automate the identification and sorting of the incoming cartons. The end result is an easily maintained, flexible and automated system that is capable of processing up to 12,000 cases per shift and is expandable to support further growth.

Control, monitoring and labelling

The system features an innovative product induction area that allows truck drivers to unload directly onto a Dorner inclined, powered stainless belt conveyor. Packages are then properly gapped by the system before entering a multi-identification tunnel that captures the barcoded shipper tag information. If the package content includes RFID tagged drugs, the Dorner control system can peer through the over-wrap carton and instantaneously capture hundreds of RFID serial numbers before the package leaves the tunnel. This information is then stored in a database to begin the all-important immutable tracking required by the authorities.

After leaving the barcode tunnel, the package moves to an in-line high-speed labelling station, where it receives a 'license plate' label to uniquely identify the package. This license plate number is married with the other tracking information in the database. The package then continues into another secured area on a Dorner inclined, powered belt conveyor onto a fully integrated cross belt sorter. Since the Dorner Autologik system knows the belt location, contents, and destination location of each package, the cross belt sorter smoothly routes the drugs to their correct processing lanes where the drugs receive their final disposition.

More information on these new conveyors and the services provided by Dorner is available at www.dorner-conveyors.co.uk.