PHARMACEUTICALS


Pharma 4.0: powered by AI- enabled vision, robotics and the Internet of Tings


Benjamin Skuse discovers how cutting- edge vision solutions could make future pharma production more efficient, accurate and compliant with the latest regulations


P


roducing life-saving drugs in vast quantities, the pharmaceutical industry has long required safety and


security standards above and beyond those of many other industries. In short, customer safety is paramount – at its most extreme, conforming to these standards can be the difference between life and death. Tis is why pharma companies were


some of the earliest adopters of machine vision solutions, though the first vision systems that came out in the 1980s were understandably primitive. For example, in 1981 lecturer Robert Shillman, and two graduate students Marilyn Matz and Bill Silver, spun out a company called Cognex from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Te company’s first product was DataMan, the world’s only industrial optical character recognition (OCR) system at the time, which was first applied to inspect typewriter keys to ensure that they were located in the correct position. “You can imagine, the first computers


doing vision were racks taking up half a room, and the vision systems used to be


$50-60,000, so inflation-adjusted super, super expensive,” says Joshua Deats, Cognex Global Packaging Manager. “But in terms of getting in with all the big pharmaceutical brands, we were one of the first who really pioneered OCR, and barcode reading as well.” Fast forward to today and OCR – used


in packing facilities to read and verify the correctness and legibility of important information on pill bottle labels, for example – is just the tip of the iceberg of what vision systems can do, not only helping companies comply with strict standards, but also delivering significant productivity gains. Applications that have become run-


of-the-mill include everything from PPE quality control inspection to vial and bottle packaging inspection, and counterfeit identification. Steve Zhu, Director of Sales for Asia at Teledyne Dalsa – a Canadian leading machine vision and imaging technology innovator – provides another common application. “When I joined the company almost 20 years ago, the first inspection application in the pharmaceutical industry was blister pack inspection for one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in Asia,” he recalls. “Basically, we needed to detect missing capsules in the blister board, if there was an empty capsule, if there was a stain on the surface of the blister board, or if there was a hair or other foreign matter outside or inside.” At the time, this called for an analogue


camera coupled to an infrared backlight in order to see inside the blister pack. Today, peering inside blister packs is done using one of Teledyne Dalsa’s X-ray cameras alongside Sherlock vision software.


16 IMAGING AND MACHINE VISION EUROPE AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2023


‘Take-up for advanced AI machine vision systems has been slow in the pharmaceutical industry’


Standing out in a crowd With stiff competition in this space, machine vision solution providers must have a unique selling point. For Cognex, it is offering a popular high-performance product portfolio ideal for most applications that has seen the company become one of the world’s leading providers of vision systems, software, sensors, and industrial barcode readers. For Teledyne Dalsa, it is providing products that allow customers to zoom in on fine detail. And for German camera technology and image capture solutions specialist Allied Vision, it is providing the precise solution that fits customers’ needs, either through Allied Vision’s vast product range or via a bespoke solution. Tanh Luu, Junior Business Development


Manager at Allied Vision, elaborates: “We are currently driving a lot for applications such as vial/ampoule inspection,” Luu details. “While the vials are being rotated, up to 20 cameras (depending on the


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