Excella GmbH, based near Nuremberg, needed more transparency for its demanding pharmaceutical manufacturing facility: a system adapting to its processes and delivering the right information at every level. Flexible, automatic production data acquisition with SIMATIC WinCC V8 delivers exactly that.
Pharmaceutical production means enormous variety and flexibility: highly diverse products, different processes, five lines with machines from multiple manufacturers. To continuously capture operating data and productivity across this complex environment, Excella needed a solution that lets teams from the shop floor to controlling and management plan, implement, and measure improvements based on concrete numbers.
Which line has which status, where are the problems: shift supervisors and production teams see it live at any time. Order times are captured automatically, without manual data entry, saving teams 5 to 10 minutes per order.
The system adapts to Excella's processes, not the other way around. Maximum flexibility in data visualization and integration: SIMATIC WinCC V8 and PM-ANALYZE meet the requirements of machines from different manufacturers.
From overall line status down to individual machines and process steps: micro-stoppages that previously went unnoticed can now be identified and resolved with simple measures. A magnifying glass in the process.
The particular challenge at Excella lies in the enormous variety and flexibility of its processes. In packaging alone, the company operates five lines capable of producing a wide range of products: single blisters, multiple blisters, bottles, folding cartons. "Practically anything is possible," explains Viktoria Megner, Head of Pharmaceutical Packaging at Excella GmbH & Co. KG.
To continuously capture operating data and line productivity in this demanding environment, Excella needed a correspondingly versatile solution: "So that we can plan, implement, and measure improvements based on concrete numbers," as the expert explains.
A key criterion for production data acquisition was that the system should adapt to Excella’s diverse processes and requirements, not the other way around, Megner continues: “We also made sure that we got the staff in the packaging plant on board and fully supported them in their work. The goal was to introduce the system as smoothly as possible without our teams having to absorb too much new information.” That’s why maximum flexibility in displaying the recorded data as well as in data integration was a must: two requirements that Siemens was able to fulfill easily with SIMATIC WinCC V8 and the PM-ANALYZE Add-on.
We can now target individual machines or process steps in order to optimize their productivity and, for example, detect micro-stops. This often allows processes to be significantly improved with simple measures.
From the beginning, one thing was clear to leaders at Excella: “Connecting to the existing machines is easier said than done,” says Sebastian Eibner, lead technician in the pharmaceutical packaging division at Excella GmbH & Co. KG. Integrating five lines with machines from different manufacturers into a common architecture required a great deal of expertise from the system and project team. It helped that SIMATIC WinCC V8 offers extensive mechanisms for easy communication with different machines and manufacturers: one reason why Excella chose Siemens and SIMATIC WinCC V8.
Order times are now recorded automatically. That alone saves our packaging teams five to ten minutes per order. With the large number of orders we process, that’s certainly three to four hours per week.
Excella initially started with just one line, so that it could work through the basics and make further decisions. The mature system was then implemented in the other lines. Which status each line has, where the problems are: Production managers and teams can access and review all this information live at any time. Production tracking and documentation also has improved: Order times are now recorded automatically without employees having to enter data manually: “That alone saves five to ten minutes per order. With the large number of orders we process, that’s certainly three to four hours per week. It reduces the workload for our teams noticeably,” confirms Manuel Eckert, lead technician in the pharmaceutical packaging division at Excella GmbH & Co. KG.
One aspect of SIMATIC WinCC V8 that Sebastian Eibner particularly emphasizes is the high resolution of the recorded data. “Not only do we have an excellent overview of the entire packaging process, but we can also target individual machines or process steps to optimize their productivity.” As an example, he cites so-called micro-stops, where the machine loses only a few cycles: “In the past, this was almost never noticed because the machine was, at least to the human eye, running continuously. But with the detailed data, we could clearly see that, for example, individual units on a line kept going into standby mode because the cycle time was not optimal. So we simply moved a sensor a few centimeters, and the problem was solved.”
Thanks to production data acquisition, we can use concrete data to plan, implement, and measure improvements: hard numbers instead of perceived truth.
The collaboration between Excella and Siemens does not stop at implementation. Together, they continuously expand and improve the system. Next step: automatically transferring order information from the ERP system. The long-term availability and high level of detail of the data open up entirely new possibilities for optimizing processes at Excella, making pharmaceutical production more transparent, efficient, and future-ready day by day.