Harpak-ULMA, an industry-leading packaging solutions provider, announced it is working with multiple medical device manufacturers commissioned to supply high volume syringe supplies as part of BARDA’s rapidly expanding COVID-19 Medical Countermeasure Portfolio. 

The US Government’s Operation Warp Speed has been tasked with increasing domestic production capacity of safety needles and syringes. Meeting projected COVID-19 surge demand means these producers must rapidly scale supply inventories far in excess of routine healthcare consumption levels. Harpak-ULMA’s thermoforming platforms, robotic loaders and case packing automation are ideal for urgent, time-sensitive programs such as Operation Warp Speed that demand swift deployment, maximum scalability and extreme throughput.  The company was already deploying its solutions to support COVID testing kits (swabs, vials, etc.)

Harpak-ULMA thermoforming and flow-wrapping platforms offer the highest throughput available, employ a variety of tooling to maximize flexibility, and utilize a modular design that allows rapid component substitution to meet unique configuration requests. Harpak-ULMA’s end-to-end solutions incorporate both high-speed autoloading and secondary packaging automation, a key consideration for commissioning a high-speed medical packaging line in the shortest possible time frame. 

Human productivity is another consideration, impacting both scalability and time to market. Even in highly automated environments, accelerated learning curves for operators and maintenance teams have a direct impact on meeting such aggressive throughput expectations. Harpak-ULMA’s recently announced Augmented Reality capabilities, which result in rapid and quantifiable improvement in staff work instructions execution, was a key selection consideration for one of the multiple producers involved in the initiative. 

The company’s AR capabilities are founded in Rockwell Automations’ Allen Bradley (AB) automation controls and PTC’s Vuforia suite.  Employing AB controls helps to assure widespread compatibility with many producers’ corporate IT standards, as well as ubiquitous parts and service availability–both key to rapid adoption and scalability.

It has expanded its 2D LiDAR sensor offerings for localization and anti-collision applications with the compact TiM2xx product family. This is in response to the new requirements on functionality, size, and price.

Globally, the e-commerce sector continues to experience strong growth. This has also led to an increase in demand for automation solutions to support the growing logistics infrastructure and the transport of goods and products.

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) are handling more logistics tasks of varying kinds. Simultaneously, the latest AMR designs are becoming increasingly compact and streamlined.

Accordingly, 2D LiDAR sensor solutions need to keep pace with these new types of applications in terms of functionality, size, and price. With the TiM2xx series, SICK is launching a sensor that excels at all three.

The TiM240 is the first variant in the TiM2xx series and has an enclosure rating of IP65 for indoor use. The TiM240 scans a 240 degree area up to 10 meters away at speeds up to 15 times per second.

Due to the high penetration level of DER (Distributed Energy Resources) the grid is posing a great amount of complex challenges on the functioning of inverters. As a solution for these common problems the smart inverters come into play by solving most of the problems of the traditional system. Since smart inverters work autonomously, they have a positive impact on the implemented residential sector as well as the national power grid. The traditional grid requires constant maintenance due to the stress, but smart inverters could help to address these localized challenges and grow the flexibility of the system. Smart inverters let two- way communication with utility control centers. In addition, advanced capabilities such as voltage and frequency sensors allow smart inverters to detect grid abnormalities and send the feedback to utility operators.

Delta’s smart solar inverter solutions enables the smart and cost-effective designs for industrial and small utility-scale PV power plants by maximizing energy yields even in challenging landscapes and locations. The smart Inverter will have more DC overloading options, flexible MPPT channels, fuse- less or in-line fuse options, wireless communication systems, mobile friendly APPs etc. With the mentioned features systems will have reduced clipping losses and provide extra generation (kWh) than the conventional PCUs.

As mentioned above, we have always offered an excellent level of integration and openness across all systems – this has been the selling point of TIA (Totally Integrated Automation) for the past 25 years. Consequently, our Simatic PCS 7 process control system is one of the most open control systems on the market. With this concept, we provide our customers with smooth interactions between systems from different manufacturers in modular plants. Initially, the chemical industry was skeptical as to whether, given the complexity of digitalization, this type of open approach could be implemented as an alternative to the one-stop-shop solution. But our success proves us right. We will therefore continue to pursue this strategy of simulating the entire lifecycle through comprehensive vertical and horizontal integration. This also applies to our new control system, the Simatic PCS neo. We are delighted that the issues we have addressed here are in line with the latest trends. For example, the system offers web-based multi-user capabilities, making engineering much easier. Another significant feature for applications in fine chemicals and the pharmaceutical industry is the native support of MTPs (Module Type Packages) and the modularity that this offers.

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