Manufacturer Revives De-Commissioned System to Advance Production
Key Highlights
- The recertified system now performs equally to newer equipment, producing 500,000 tablets per hour while meeting strict pharmaceutical qualification and validation standards.
- Manufacturers are shifting away from expensive complete overhauls and adopting circular automation approaches that reuse existing equipment while upgrading critical components like cybersecurity and control systems.
- 48% of North American manufacturers plan to update or integrate legacy systems, embracing circular servicing models that prioritize repair, reconditioning and hardware upgrades over complete replacement.
The ability to bring something back to life might seem outlandish, but it now happens regularly in automation as interest in equipment recertification reignites with the rise of intelligent automation. Daunted by the high up-front cost of completely overhauling existing machinery, manufacturers are increasingly looking at re-use, recycling and the circular economy when it comes to automated equipment.
According to an ABB Motion survey, more than 3,000 industrial decision-makers said they are shifting towards circular servicing models that prioritize repair, reconditioning, preventative maintenance and hardware upgrades. This embrace of a circular hardware/software philosophy not only cuts costs and increases uptime, it also aligns sustainability initiatives and positions organizations as being more forward-thinking and resilient.
And a recent survey conducted by B2B International, commissioned by Aptean and targeting manufacturing leaders across North America, showed that 48% of respondents indicated plans to update or integrate their legacy systems. These plans involved incorporating dormant or existing legacy equipment into their automation renewal strategies.
At Huffman Engineering, we recently saw this trend in action while working on a project at a global pharmaceutical facility known for its rapid production of common consumer health medications. The hallmark of this project involved reviving the use of old but functional equipment that had been out of commission for years while meeting strict pharmaceutical qualification and validation standards.
Bringing an old system back to life
In this pharmaceutical plant, a seal-coating system used for tablet production had not been operational since 2013. Increased production demands, however, led this pharmaceutical company to think outside of the box and evaluate the possibilities of re-engineering this system for use in the company’s current production line.
This out-of-the-box thinking yielded a result few would have considered just weeks prior when looking at a piece of equipment that had been relegated to the forgotten closet of decommissioned hardware.
Fortunately, because of our long-standing relationship with the client, Huffman Engineering’s team helped install the original system. As a result of Huffman Engineering’s disciplined practice around archived records, details of the original system proved to be a strong starting place.
Examination by our engineers found that the system could still be powered on and communicate to verify its viability in production operations. The system was still controlled by the initial standard PLC sequenced program, and all analog and digital input and outputs were still in working order. However, a few key replacements were needed.
These replacements included a new HMI built on Ignition, transitioning from an older Allen-Bradley Control Logix LT5562 (1756-L62) to a newer Allen Bradley Control Logix 1756-L72 processor, and installing a new managed Ethernet switch for cybersecurity along with a few spare parts the manufacturer had on hand.
The process to program the new controller, add it to their network, install a modern HMI in a clean zone with verification and add it to their batch server environment took only a few weeks.
With these updates in place, the locked-out, tagged-out seal-coater that had been dormant for 13 years was brought back to life. Not only was the system revived, it worked equally as well as the company’s newer systems, churning out half a million tablets in one hour.
This out-of-the-box thinking yielded a result few would have considered just weeks prior when looking at a piece of equipment that had been relegated to the forgotten closet of decommissioned hardware. There is no question that, with the increasing speed of technological transformation, modernization of industry is a necessity not a luxury. But this doesn’t mean you have to throw out everything that exists in your plant to achieve this.
A strong system integration partner can marry existing equipment and new technologies with strong results.
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About the Author
Nathan Bilyeu
Nathan Bilyeu is a mechanical engineer at Huffman Engineering Inc., certified members of the Control System Integrators Association (CSIA). For more information about Huffman Engineering, visit its profile on the Industrial Automation Exchange.
