November 2007
Norgine is a speciality pharmaceutical manufacturer with production plants in France and Wales. At its Welsh factory, Norgine has been using checkweighers from CI Electronics for over 10 years and, within the last five years, has also invested in capsule weight sorters.
Pam Williams, the Technical Support Scientist at Norgine's factory in Hengoed, Wales, comments: "The CI Electronics analysers and sorters operate continually, and some have done so for over ten years. We are very satisfied with the data they produce and their operational reliability.
“On the rare occasions when there has been a problem, we have either been able to speak to an expert at CI Electronics immediately, or someone has called back within half an hour. If the problem cannot be resolved over the telephone and a service visit is necessary, the engineer either arrives the same day or the next day. With this level of reliability and service, we have such confidence with the instruments that we have never purchased spare units as a back-up, despite them being critical to us maintaining efficient, quality-controlled production.”
Twelve QM-4B sample checkweighers are in use, some of which have an integral bowl feeder and CI weigh head, while others operate with separate top pan balances. Norgine uses the integral units to weigh tablets in the range 400-600mg and capsules of Size 3 and Size 1, whereas the units with separate top pan balances weigh 12-15g sachets.
The checkweighers play an important role in the production process, monitoring the output from the tablet compression machines, capsule fillers and sachet filling lines. Each QM-4B control unit performs statistical analyses, the results of which are then printed on dedicated printers connected directly to the control units. These statistics collected from in-process samples of 20-100 items enable Norgine to demonstrate ongoing control of its production processes.
When tablets and capsules are being checkweighed, the operator simply loads the samples into the bowl feeder and leaves the unit to run unattended, so other line checking activities can be carried out at the same time. Ease of set-up and simple cleaning also help Norgine to maintain high operational efficiencies; this is important because samples are taken every 30 minutes, and the main production lines run 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
As well as their strict process monitoring, Norgine also 100 per cent weight-sorts its filled capsule products using three CI SADE sorters. These are connected to a PC running CI’s WinSort software for storing and analysing the data. Although the primary purpose is to sort the batches to prevent out-of-tolerance products being packed, the statistics generated by WinSort are used to facilitate setting the capsule filler prior to the next batch being run.
As with the checkweighers, the weight sorters are simple to use and quick to clean. The hoppers of the SADE sorters enable them to run unattended for many hours, often operating over a weekend - with the hoppers only needing to be replenished once in that period.