Becton & Dickson utilize BARman to manage syringes in huge quantities. 

Introduction

The multinational company Becton & Dickinson specializes in the production of medical instruments.  They have several production sites spread over the world.  The main feature of this application is the enabling of production management and quality control, which is more precise and more reliable than ever before.  These two aspects allow to the production manager to maintain a better overview and allow more flexibility in management.

This factory mainly produces syringes in huge quantities.  This is possible because the production rate is high and the employees work in three shifts.   The majority of the syringes purchased in Europe originate from Becton & Dickinson.

General application description

The principle idea with this application was that once installed, it should allow the workers to manage the weight of each filled tray, regardless of the quantity.  This was indeed the factory's largest dilemma before the introduction of the new system.  Naturally, to figure out the weight of each tray, one must capture the data concerning the weight of the trays and then be able to recognize them. 

In this case, the solution for the data capture was found by installing a BARman by each machine and then pasting a barcode label containing all the necessary information on the tray.  To print the labels, technicians connected the scales directly to their printers.  As long as the BARman is in use, the workers do not need to download anything.   It is only at the end of the day that the data is downloaded to the database.

The factory's production line is nearly all done by machines.  Each machine contributes its production step and is connected to the BARman and the printer.

The glass syringes themselves are produced by the machines at a very fast pace.  To find the quantity, the workers place the syringes in trays which are weighed. In knowing the weight of one syringe, they can figure the total amount of syringes contained in each tray. 

Before the introduction of the BARman, workers had to strictly maintain the weight of each syringe to match the set standard of one thousand pieces, assuming the amount in a full tray.  Sometimes the series of syringes had reached the end before the last trays were completely full.  Since full trays were used to find the quantity, these partly full trays were not manageable and had to be spared for the next series.

But now, thanks to the mobile data capture, the trays can be managed even if they don't contain the same number of syringes.  This is due to the fact that the weight of each one is printed in form of a barcode label which is posted on its side.  The BARman captures this information along with other useful data such as:

• batch number

• producing machine number

• tray number

All of this data is kept within the BARman's memory until the evening when all of the data is downloaded to the database.

The new system makes quality checks are also much easier to integrate.  These checks, were and still are, done by taking pieces from the tray and testing them.  The weakness with this method before was that if workers removed syringes from trays, the weight changed and without the data capture system the quantity would be misconstrued.  So before the introduction of the BARman, the trays which had been checked, were simply put back into the production without any modifications.  Now, new labels are printed for these trays and the BARman is directly connected to the network.  The quality checks no longer disturb the management of the trays.

The BARman system allows the trays to have different weights without any management problems.  The workers can now use the half-full trays as well as the full ones, simplifying the first production step to the last. The quality and quantity is much more precise and more reliable than before.