Problem: A multi-national pharmaceutical company wanted to expand its operations in North America. They had a need to greatly increase their premix manufacturing capabilities at three locations in North America. Management decided that the system should be fully automated with front to back inventory control. Since their product would be distributed to many different feed manufacturers, they wanted to make sure that they could track each of the ingredients that went into their products, as well as be able to track the finished goods that were produced.
Solution: The design build engineering firm that was hired to do the systems approached APEC to see what we could offer, since they knew that we had worked on premix systems previously. We worked with the customers and contractor’s engineering staffs to develop a specification and implementation schedule. APEC designed a system that had barcode scanning for ingredients so they could be tracked within the plant all the way through the process to their final finished packaging. The system utilized off the shelf components and a software package that would be easily modified as needs changed.
Result: The APEC system gave the customer the capability to automatically produce and track their formulas. The system also kept track of the quality control functions that were used for both incoming ingredients and finished packages. The system was installed and commissioned in keeping with the customer’s schedule, and since the system was completely automated, the needs for accuracy, record keeping, and ingredient tracking were easily accomplished with the reports that were generated by the control system.
