Serialization requirements are pushing pharmaceutical packagers to integrate their lines through Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology, but questions remain for many of them, according to a study released last fall by PMMI Business Intelligence.
“Integrated communication is always desirable, but a challenge to implement with so many different pieces of equipment,” responded one packaging line manager to the survey. “The most important question is: Who is going to oversee the data collection and who’s going to mine and interpret that data?”
Typical types of data being collected on production/packaging lines include production rates, scrap/waste, run time, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), maintenance diagnostics, product tracking, fault time and batch control.
Concerns among respondents range from temporary Internet outages to trust issues with cloud storage. MQTT is a machine-to-machine data transfer protocol that is gaining support for IIoT, and holds promise for pharmaceutical line integration.
Get the full 58-page report, PMMI Business Intelligence, Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices 2016: Trends and Opportunities in Packaging Operations.
