The number of patients requiring dialysis treatment throughout the world is constantly rising. The figure is set to increase from 3.2 million people worldwide at the end of 2017 to an estimated level of almost five million by the year 2025. This trend is attributable not only to an ageing population but also to an increase in the number of people suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes – often the early warning signs of terminal kidney failure. As a result, the demand for dialysis products is very likely to keep on growing, and it is against this background that Fresenius Medical Care has become intensively involved in this market.
Just how large this demand has already become is clearly evidenced by the end-of-line packaging system that has gone into operation at the Fresenius site in St. Wendel in 2019 and which displays an impressive output level of close to 300 disinfecting caps per minute. When it came to finding someone to implement the complex packaging line, Fresenius turned to the packaging technology specialists – PKM Packaging.
A challenging task
The company based in Pirmasens is one of the top addresses for intelligent automation solutions and focuses in particular on the medical, pharmaceutical and food industries. PKM develops and engineers custom solutions that display a maximum level of productivity for applications that do not readily lend themselves to economic automation using standard systems.
In this case, the job was first of all to pack 300 dialysis caps per minute – which are fed into the packaging system in blister packs via five feed conveyors – into so-called dispenser boxes. Ten of these dispenser boxes are then placed in a shipping carton. What sounds simple at first quickly reveals itself as a major challenge once you realise the cycle times involved.
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