Chutes and Leaders

Dan Davis

Vertical Chutes and Conveyors Linked with Automatic Guided Vehicles Improve Efficiency at Apotex's New Multi-Level Facility

Big plans call for big changes.Apotex, the largest Canadian-owned pharmaceutical company, recognized the turn of the millennium as the time to ratchet up its sales of its generic pharmaceuticals. With the continuing price pressures on brand-name prescription drugs, Apotex sees its ability to increase production of new generic products as being a critical component for growth.

Currently, Apotex produces more than 210 generic pharmaceuticals in approximately 750 dosages and formats that are used to fill more than 42 million prescriptions a year in Canada. By the end of 2002, early projections had the company producing 8 billion individual doses. By 2007, that's expected to hit 12 billion individual doses.

To keep pace with its bullish growth and forecasts, Apotex officials realized it needed a new plant to handle its current production volumes while at the same time allowing for future growth. The project would also require a new approach to material handling.

"We realized an efficient materials handling system would be needed in order to achieve our productivity demands," says Ron McArthur, Apotex's senior vice president of operations.

To help them achieve the vision of an advanced material handling system, Apotex enlisted the Canadian office of FKI Logistex's Automation Division.

A Moving Decision

Completed in 2001, Apotex's newest manufacturing operation in Toronto is a tribute to Sir Isaac Newton and his apple. Gravity is the force behind the movement of drug powders between factory floors.

That's right. This building is a multi-story production facility, not a ground-level operation common in the pharmaceutical industry. Production operations are located on the first three floors, and the fourth floor is used solely to move materials from the attached warehouse and the production building.

Stainless steel chutes in the plant's dispensing rooms on the main floor (ground level) are used to deliver drug powders to the receiving bins in processing rooms on the lower level (below ground). Similar chutes on the third level allow tumbled materials to be dispensed to main-floor processing areas. Vertical conveyors and lifts from the Mathews Operations of FKI Logistex's Automation Division and automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) from FMC Corp. handle the automated movement of materials between levels.

The bin-handling system, designed by FKI Logistex, is at the heart of material movement in the four-level facility. Housed in its own elevator shaft, the vertical conveyor provides 65 feet of lift with a footprint of only 50 square feet. Shuttle cars are used to move the stainless steel bins, which weigh up to 6,000 pounds, from the vertical lift to loading and unloading areas.

The new facility uses radio frequency identification (RFID) and barcode technology to track all materials and products, keep resources evenly distributed and prevent production logjams. The barcodes are found on bins used during the manufacturing process and the smaller plastic totes used for shuttling finished product to the packaging plant in the warehouse.

"The system has really reduced our losses in product," McArthur says. "Our yields have jumped significantly, while our residual waste levels have dropped."

Track the Material

To get a better idea of how material flows in the Apotex facility, let's follow the materials.

Measured materials from the warehouse make their way down from the fourth level to the main floor where they are steered to dispensing rooms. Dumped into stainless steel chutes, materials wind up in steel handling bins on the bottom floor. An AGV then moves each container, which is tagged with an individual barcode, to the tumbling area.

Once the material is tumbled, the AGV delivers the bin to the integrated conveyor and vertical lift. The bin is destined for the third level.

When the bin arrives, another AGV pulls the bin from the lift and carries it to a feeding station. The bin's bottom opens up over a chute, and gravity takes over, delivering the material to the main floor for either compacting, tabletting or encapsulating.

Materials that need to be milled and compacted go directly to the compacting area. When the process is completed, the medications are delivered via chute to receiving bins on the lower level. An AGV carries the bin to the vertical lift for delivery to the third level, where the medications will be dispensed to the main-floor tabletting or encapsulating areas.

In the tabletting room, machines form the drug powders into pills that are then fed into receiving trays. Pills not requiring coating are transported by AGV to the vertical lift for delivery to the fourth level. For tablets requiring coating, AGVs transport the load to the adjacent coating room where the coating process takes place.

In the encapsulation room, compounds and compacted drug powders are placed into capsules and fed into receiving trays, identical to those in the tabletting rooms. After thorough inspection, an AGV delivers the plastic totes of encapsulated medicines to the vertical lift for a ride to the fourth level.

At the fourth-level drop-off station, product totes are placed on a conveyor that moves them into the warehouse.

Regulation and Contamination

Apotex is eyeing entry into the U.S. market and has applied for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of its manufacturing site. Of course, to gain that approval, Apotex has taken several steps to persuade FDA regulators that cross-contamination will never be a problem in its plant.