Lifecycle extension of a Pharmaceutical filling system
Expanding lifecycle of production lines, retrofit of obsolete legacy control system to new modern control platform.
The main challenges.
One filling system each consists of 40 motors. The old obsolete control system had no documentation and specification, so the challenge was to analyse and decode the old system and here by being able to specify and set requirements for the new control system.
Another challenge was to find and select a hardware platform that could operate in aseptic filling room areas with minimal hardware space.
Also, the customer wanted the retrofit replacement to be performed quickly and without production and quality risk. Hence, a test setup of the production lines with the filling system was built, providing the opportunity to test and validate almost everything in a test environment.
The goal.
- Create and develop a validation and documentation package for the new control system of the filling system.
- Perform the retrofit with very short downtime on production lines (1 week).
- Short implementation and validation onsite.
- Create documentation and validation packages that could be leveraged to SAT and IVOV by using configuration control and moving most of the validation and testing to the FAT phase.
- Develop a new modern control system to control the filling system within a high-performance Beckhoff platform with a modern ProfiNet bus interface to the existing PLC system.
- Create an extended HMI/SCADA interface for the filling system and modify and create a new PLC code to control and get status from the new filling control system.
The result.
Retrofit the control system for the filling system with abridged production downtime, including full validation and test packages from FAT to installation verification and operational verification.
Want to know more?
Contact
Jakob Rostgaard
CEO
+45 30 71 43 65
René Pejstrup
CEO