Pharmaceutical Label Verification System

Summary

DMC developed a system for a pharmaceutical company to verify that the information on a vial’s label is correct, centered, and legible.

Customer Benefits

• Rejection of illegible or off-centered labels ensures that customers only see quality labeled products
• Label verification system and database tracking gives customer traceability and evidence necessary for the FDA

Technologies

• DVT 540 Vision Inspection Camera
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
• MySQL Database
• Allen Bradley ControlLogix 1756 PLC

Solution

The vision inspection camera takes an image of the label as the vial passes by on the manufacturing line. The camera reads the lot number and expiration date using Optical Character Recognition and reads the unique part ID by reading the barcode. All three pieces of information are passed to the Allen Bradley PLC. The expiration date and lot number must be correct for the part to pass. The PLC passes the part ID to the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET application, which checks the part ID against the database to verify that it is unique. If the part ID is found to be unique it is entered into the database to be checked against future labels.

In addition to developing the system, DMC assist the customer with risk assessments and other FDA validation needs during the initial installation and subsequent modifications to the system.