Research progress on key technologies of pharmaceutical intelligent manufacturing production line

To this end, with the continuous advancement of the pharmaceutical industry 4.0 era, the study of pharmaceutical intelligent manufacturing production line is the trend of The Times, through the combination of intelligent robots and intelligent manufacturing, the construction of integrated, automated intelligent manufacturing production line is an important topic of the pharmaceutical industry, so the study of highly sterile, intelligent pharmaceutical intelligent manufacturing production line is crucial.

2 Key technologies of pharmaceutical intelligent manufacturing production line

The pharmaceutical intelligent manufacturing production line proposed in this paper is an intelligent manufacturing system composed of multiple intelligent robots, such as sterile flexible dispensing robot, sterile filling-transaction-sealing robot, pharmaceutical quality visual inspection robot, sterile sorting and packaging robot, and intelligent handling robot, as shown in Figure 1. It can realize bacteria-free, automated drug production and packaging from pharmaceutical process to packaging process.

As a representative advanced pharmaceutical production line in the field of pharmaceutical equipment manufacturing, it is necessary to study its key technologies. This paper mainly focuses on the key technologies such as inbacterialized intelligent production, visual inspection of medical quality, flexible grasping and intelligent handling, and intelligent coordination and optimization control. Combined with the research results of our own team and domestic and foreign scholars, the research progress is described and analyzed.

2.1 Bactericidal intelligent production

The sterilization operation of pharmaceutical production covers the production environment, packaging materials, drugs themselves and other aspects, and the sterilization process always runs through the beginning and end of the production process. However, the current asphyxiation technology is limited by many factors such as drug types and pharmaceutical processes, and the asphyxiation of pharmaceutical processes has always been an international technical problem in urgent need of breakthroughs [16].

Because the traditional sterilization technology mainly relies on the high temperature sterilization of drugs, it is difficult to meet the sterilization standard of drugs on the one hand, and it is difficult to avoid the secondary pollution of drugs after sterilization. For this reason, JILDEH et al. [17] tried to develop a new sterilization process using hydrogen peroxide, and analyzed and verified it through numerical simulation. The use of supercritical carbon dioxide for sterilization is a green and sustainable technology.

RIBEIRO et al. [18] studied the experimental method of supercritical sterilization and evaluated its effect and application in medicine. In addition, PREEM et al. [19] evaluated the effects of various sterilization methods, such as gamma ray irradiation, ultraviolet irradiation, in-situ generation of chlorine gas and low argon plasma treatment, and studied the changes in drug stability, morphology and other drug properties before and after sterilization. As the selection and evaluation of sterilization process is an important topic for realizing bactericidal intelligent production, SHIRAHATA et al. [20] developed an online decision support tool for the selection of aseptic filling technology in biopharmaceutical production. In addition, ARREOLA et al. [21] proposed a combined biosensor array based on calorimetric gas and spores to monitor and evaluate the germicidal effect of hydrogen peroxide gas in aseptic filling machines.

In this process, the separation of the bottle embryo manufacturing and the subsequent process will lead to the adsorption of bacteria and suspended particles in the air on the drug, thus causing the packaging material to be polluted. Therefore, it is necessary to achieve ultra-clean blowing and sealing in the same mold. In the production line of blowing, filling and sealing of plastic ampoules, a sealed vacuum system and aseptic air flow control were adopted to build a complex electromechanical, temperature, gas and hydraulic control system to realize a new process and principle of blowing, filling and sealing of plastic injection, so as to develop an integrated blowing, filling and sealing pharmaceutical machine to meet the whole process of bacteria-free production of drugs in the same mold.

2.2 Visual inspection of medical quality

The visual inspection of medical quality mainly includes the detection of visible foreign bodies in medicine, the detection of components and the detection of packaging defects. Traditional medical quality detection is mainly through artificial naked eye detection, because the human eye is easy to fatigue, easy to be affected by external interference, easy to lead to missed detection, false detection, resulting in poor product quality, low production efficiency. Therefore, it is very important to develop a visual inspection robot for the quality inspection of oral liquid, ampoule, infusion bottle and other liquid products on the pharmaceutical production line. The pharmaceutical quality visual inspection robot can detect the glass debris, aluminum debris, rubber shavings, hair, fiber and other foreign bodies in the pharmaceutical liquid online, identify the damage of the bottle itself, the packaging quality of the bottle mouth and other defects, and can automatically sort unqualified products.