Project Overview

New Time Pharmaceutical Company ranks as one of China's largest and most comprehensive pharmaceutical production bases. One of its Chinese traditional medicine manufacturing plants occupies a floor area of 172,000 ㎡. Annually, the plant processes more than 70 types of medicinal materials with a total output of 25,000 tons. The high throughput demands a high level of intralogistics automation.

As a key element in Mingdu Zhiyun’s automation solution for a smart pharmaceutical production line, XYZ Robotics has significantly contributed to fully automated medicinal material feeding and distribution by deploying 8 (de)palletizing robots in the plant. These robots automate the entire process from storing raw medicinal materials to feeding the preprocessed ones to the production line.

This collaboration leads to an impressive 4x boost in productivity, achieving a peak feeding rate of 1.2 tons per minute. The project is recognized as an exceptional automation case in pharmaceutical supply chain innovation and application for the 2022-2023 year.

Complete Process Automation

The automated production line implemented by Mingdu Zhiyun covers the entire process from automatic unloading, palletizing, packaging, and transportation of raw medicinal materials to weighing, partitioning, storage, feeding of preprocessed medicinal materials, and recycling of empty totes.

XYZ Robotics' 8 (de)palletizing robots have streamlined the material flow through efficient handling of bags, totes, and pallets. The vision-guided robots take charge of key in-plant distribution processes such as inbound storage, preprocessing, and feeding, ensuring a more efficient throughput that aligns with the production rate.

After the project reaches full production, the expected annual processing capacity for medicinal materials will reach 12,000 tons, and the annual production of various types of medicines will reach 1.7 billion bags. In terms of intelligent automation and production efficiency, this will further solidify the customer's leading position in the pharmaceutical industry.

Comprehensive Functionality

(De)palletizing seems to be easy with the help of 3D vision. However, there are many variants and industry-specific requirements in this case.

Traditional medicinal materials are in the form of pieces, branches, or chunks. The poor consistency poses great challenges to stable picking and distribution. Because medicinal materials are stored in different units like bags and totes, robots are supposed to perform various picking operations between the warehouse and the production line. This calls for comprehensive tech capabilities, including 3D vision to recognize and a custom gripper to pick. The complex layouts in the plant also demand high flexibility and versatility of robot systems.

Challenge ①: Vision recognition

Compared to objects with fixed dimensions such as cardboard boxes, bags with medicinal materials are random-sized, deformable, and prone to wrinkle. Additionally, totes are tightly packed with minimal gaps, requiring high recognition precision for gripper manipulation.

Our solution:

1. XYZ Robotics' high-precision 3D camera accurately identifies the edges of densely-packed totes, leading to accurate gripping and depalletizing.
2. The proprietary deep learning vision algorithm enables correct recognition and localization of bags with different orientations and sizes.

Challenge ②: Bag and tote picking

Bags and totes are common storage units in the pharmaceutical industry. In this case, they can weigh up to 50 kg, which poses challenges to stable and secure picking.

Our solution:

1. XYZ Robotics' (de)palletizing robot with custom grippers can pick both bags and totes. The high-load robotic arm and grippers ensure stable picking of 50 kg items without damage.
2. The custom bag gripper is also compatible with pallet palletizing without the need for switching, resulting in increased efficiency.

Challenge ③: Compact workspace

Limited floor height in the manufacturing plant leads to a compact workspace for (de)palletizing robots. They are supposed to operate flexibly when confronted with a large volume of medicinal materials.

Our solution:

1. XYZ Robotics' eye-in-hand camera can operate and provide precise recognition even in a compact layout.
2. The motion planning algorithm enables robots to operate seamlessly along time-optimal and collision-free trajectories, maximizing the use of available space.
3. Despite the compact layout, robots mounted on a rail depalletize flexibly and efficiently from 10 pallets to address the high throughput challenge.

Leveraging proprietary technologies including self-developed 3D camera, vision software, motion planning algorithm, and gripper design, XYZ Robotics will continue to address industry-specific pain points. With (de)palletizing robots and reliable picking solutions, XYZ Robotics empowers pharmaceutical manufacturers with efficient in-plant distribution and intelligent production lines.