World’S first unmanned, fully aseptic multi-functional commercial filling line for the bio-/pharmaceutical industry
Aseptic Smart will demonstrate a novel fully robotised, multifunctional pharmaceutical filling line with capabilities of processing several container types (vials, syringes, cartridges, ampoules, etc.) and thus bringing the sector to the fore of Industry 4.0 revolution, which is the future of manufacturing in Europe. The technology enables fast changeovers ( 30 minutes) thus providing manufacturing flexibility and agility critical in processing smaller batches of more personalised injectable medicines. Robots eliminate the need for human intervention in aseptic area and thus solve two traditional challenges within the pharma industry-sterility assurance and contamination risk reduction. Machines have a modular design which allows cheaper and faster scaling out through addition of more modules where production increase is required and reduces technology transfer costs by 94%. The technology has the following additional advantages#58;58% lower operational costs - ca. 87% less parts reduce maintenance costs and energy consumption;Compact – up to 50% smaller size as robots replace bulky material movement components e.g. conveyor belts delivering manufacturing space savings;Increased process repeatability – robots reduce rejection rates to virtually zero (less than 0.05%)Because of this, the technology has attracted interest of some large pharma companies who, like several others, are shifting from developing quot;blockbusterquot; drugs towards personalised medicine; driving growth of the €6.6 billion global pharma packaging equipment market. The project will refine robot gripping system, integrate machines to robots, develop machine vision and control system before validation and end user demonstration in actual environment. This will support fast commercialisation enabling the consortium to capture 1.5% of the market 5 years after commercialisation, translating to cumulative consortium revenue of over earn cumulative revenues of €97m and return on investment of 696%.