OEMs and controls suppliers work together to assist manufacturers of life science products.
San Juan's Convention Center hosted the Feb. 1-2, 2007 Interphex Puerto Rico conference, with a keynote presentation delivered by Maridalia Torres, director of the San Juan district Food and Drug Administration office.
One of the event's highlights was a session focusing on Packaging End-of-Line Solutions, or PELS. PELS was offered as a solution for pharmaceutical plants looking to improve efficiency on secondary and tertiary packaging systems by an alliance of Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute member companies Goodman Packaging Equipment, Packaging Machines International, and Z Automation. (PMI's Randy Spahr is shown in the accompanying photo giving a presentation during Interphex Puerto Rico.)
The PELS session was hosted by systems integrator Moriah Engineering Solutions and PMMI supplier members Schneider Electric and ELAU, Schneider's packaging automation specialists, and GE Industrial Systems. The machinery suppliers described a Packaging End-of-Line Solution that manages the risk while integrating and supporting third-party machinery.
Engineering managers from Baxter, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, IPR Pharmaceutical, Merck, Pfizer, and Procter & Gamble participated.
The PELS alliance builds on ELAU's PacDrive automation system as a common control platform providing a highly integrated engineering suite with which to integrate cartoners, case packers, wrappers, palletizers, and ancillary equipment such as labelers, vision, and printing systems. Validation and change management tools round out the pharmaceutical-specific control strategy.
Next year's Interphex Puerto Rico show is planned for Feb. 14-15, also at the Puerto Rico Convention Center.
