Pharmaceutical Solutions

While all pharmaceutical manufacturers operate with regulatory, corporate, and consumer mandates, you also share a common vision for your capsules, tablets, and softgels: unassailable quality. SYMETIX® can be of help with that.

With innovative automated inspection systems, we provide a focus that can help take your proprietary products to the highest level of quality, security, regulatory compliance and avoidance of liability. With these, plus innovative grading, material handling, design and engineering, we can help increase throughput and speed product to market.

Browse through the overviews below, download brochures, read detailed news releases and contact us to help you get started today.

Vantyx® Optical Inspection System

The “Vantyx advantage” is 100% in-line inspection at full production speeds for tablets, capsules and softgels — enabling the pharmaceutical manufacturer to deliver the highest level of diligence in product quality conformance while maximizing throughput and eliminating labor.

Equipped with up to eight high-resolution, full-color cameras, Vantyx is specially-designed for high-speed inspection applications on thermoformers (blisterpacks), flat‑bed printers (Ackley/Hartnett-style), slat fillers, and similar precision automation. A scalable, compact design maximizes application flexibility.

Vantyx inspects for critical product conformance criteria such as: color, count, shape, position, form integrity, and presence of print. Solid doses that fail to meet conformance criteria are positively removed from production flow.

Incorporated into every Vantyx system is Symetix’s patented SCA™ Spatial Color Analysis color inspection technology. Proven in dozens of fully-validated, critical applications world-wide, SCA technology delivers unmatched precision in color detection, enabling Vantyx to provide the ultimate in foreign dose detection and color control.

Vantyx is FDA 21 CFR part 11 compliant and designed using GAMP 4 guidelines. For customers focused on process certification and dose consistency, Vantyx can provide a Process Analytic Technology (PAT) solution for process measurement of your product’s physical characteristics.

Because product liability and conformance with labeling is of paramount concern, Vantyx can provide a critical contribution to your risk and cGMP programs – helping to avoid costly FDA actions, including recalls and shutdowns.

Download PDF Brochure for SYMETIX Overview

Optyx®SG/P Automated Inspection System

OptyxSG/P does for Rx and OTC softgels and tablets what subjective, slow and fatigue-prone human eyes and hands can't: it works fast and unblinkingly hour after hour, shift after shift, 24/7, without variation.

Designed for high-speed, bulk flow, 21CFR11-compliant automated inspection of regulated pharmaceutical solid doses, OptyxSG/P detects and removes size and shape irregularities – such as softgel “bananas,” bulges, broken and malformed doses, bubbles and stains – as well as millions of subtle color defects that industry experience has proven to be impossible for manual inspectors to reliably detect with any precision or consistency.

A "stand-alone" system, OptyxSG/P is available with the full set of features and functionality required for precision inspection in demanding pharmaceutical inspection applications. The core inspection system features an advanced, 4‑camera configuration, providing basic inspection resolution of 0.16mm². This configuration - a proven inspection technique used in thousands of Key Technology sorting systems worldwide - provides 2 cameras that inspect product "on belt" for surface flaws, metric features (size, length, width, and symmetry) and full color feature detection, and 2 cameras that view doses from below - “in-air” – as they leave the end of the belt, for surface flaws and full color feature detection. This configuration of multiple high-performance, proprietary cameras is coupled with the G6 image processing to yield comprehensive, all-surface inspection against user-defined conformance criteria. Non-conforming doses: foreign (or "rogue") doses, and doses with feature defects, are removed from the product stream while still airborne with a surgically precise pulse of air – in a millisecond.

Incorporated into the OptyxSG/P is a parallel image processing system that enables operators to monitor, display, and archive images - in real time - of every object of interest acquired by OptyxSG/P, such as objects failing inspection. In cases where a foreign dose object is encountered, the inspection system stops product flow, and images of all the objects that are classified as foreign are presented to the operator and stored in the batch log file. Operator/supervisor acknowledgement of each foreign object so detected is required before the system will allow further inspection of the batch. This functionality assures foreign doses are eliminated from the product stream, but also provides superior batch documentation and secure inspection system operation.

The parallel image processor also provides - in conjunction with an additional 2 cameras - the Eject Function Confirmation (EFC) feature. EFC not only confirms removal of defective product from the product stream, it also provides additional image archiving of ejection performance.

The OptyxSG/P provides precise, predictable, and documentable performance - within batch and from batch to batch. Unique features that support this performance include:

- A simplified operator graphical user interface, or GUI, developed in cooperation with pharmaceutical manufacturers. The OptyxSG/P GUI ensures that system inspection performance is independent of operator expertise, providing consistent, optimum inspection. Before each batch can be inspected, the system guides the operator through a set of permissives to prepare the system for correct set-up for that batch.

- A "self-aware" subsystem that detects and alerts the operator to all system states that may compromise inspection performance. Again, these events are documented in the batch log. This same system works in conjunction with the GUI to detect appropriate change parts and system settings to create permissives that ensure proper operator batch inspection set-up.

- A secure (encrypted) batch logging subsystem, accessible through network or USB memory stick access.

Similar to other OptyxSG family members, the OptyxSG/P is typically installed immediately prior to packaging to ensure final product quality. To further assist inspection line performance, the OptyxSG/P can include control and change part permissives for other finishing line components of the SYMETIX Continuous Softgel Finishing Line™ product family, including the Impulse™/P continuous size grader, and the PulseScrubber™ continuous softgel polishing system (available in June 2007).

OptyxSG/P can inspect up to 1,000,000 doses per hour, depending on application (actual performance may vary with dose size; SYMETIX Application Engineering will gladly conduct testing on your product and provide you with specific throughput and performance guarantees). That’s important to know in light of increasing competition and critical profit margins. Speed, throughput and reduced labor mean rapid return on investment.

SYMETIX designed OptyxSG/P using GAMP 4 guidelines for proven automation performance. It monitors processes in real-time on the production line, taking product conformance to a higher level, and is ideally suited to bulk-packaging lines.

SYMETIX can offer "turn-key" end-of-line inspection and packaging solutions customized to meet your requirements, as well as validation assistance.

Download PDF Brochure for Optyx/SG

Solutions For a More Continuous Process

By automating and linking process components, pharmaceutical products can leave encapsulating and keep moving until they’re packaged and ready to ship. The SYMETIX Continuous Softgel Finishing Line™ product line offers comprehensive solutions for totally automating your softgel finishing lines.

SYMETIX offers additional capabilities for tablet, capsule and softgel applications:

Impulse™/P Vibratory Size Graders to automatically remove over- and under-sized product early in the process. The stainless steel bed and frame and quick-remove screens are sanitary and fast to clean. And your production line keeps rolling, with a unique system to prevent blocking. Unlike traditional diverging bar graders, SYMETIX vibratory size graders have nearly three times the throughput, a minimum of moving parts, faster clean-up, vastly reduced maintenance, and no “pinch points” for worker safety concerns.

PulseScrubber™ Continuous Softgel Polishing Systems provide continuous softgel polishing at rates from 500,000 to 1,000,000 doses per hour. A non-solvent based polishing system, PulseScrubber removes mineral oil and leaked content from softgels- automatically and continuously. As opposed to tumbler-based polishing, PulseScrubber requires no manual product transfer and eliminates the risks associated with product staging between batches. As opposed to clipped media in softgel dryers, PulseScrubber has a self-contained, automatically-fed media system. This means consistent polishing without human intervention. And, unlike dryer-based polishing, PulseScrubber can also be used in a standalone mode.

Impulse™ Electromagnetic Vibratory Feeding Systems to transfer product to packaging. These compact units feature instant start/stop, handle pharmaceuticals gently, and precisely meter your product. Controls adjust for different products and processing conditions, with many options in drive sizes, conveying surfaces, and system configurations.

Fully Automated Finishing Line Design Services - SYMETIX automated finishing lines dramatically reduce finishing line labor costs, and product security risks. In conjunction with CHANGSUNG continuous dryers, SYMETIX can offer complete, professionally-engineered "encapsulator to box" automation solutions, including bulk packaging, and

VAC-U-MAX² vacuum transfer integration.

For additional softgel applications, see Nutraceutical Solutions.

Ask about SYMETIX Application Development Services to devise, verify and link new solutions to your own pharmaceutical manufacturing challenges.

¹International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) GAMP4

²VAC-U-MAX is a trademark of VAC-U-MAC Corporation, Belleville, New Jersey, USA