Manufacturer Engel discusses how Ypsomed relies on the company for its platform strategy, as well as its new compact cell which houses all automation components.
Credit: Ypsomed
The number of people suffering from diabetes grows globally by nine percent each year. For Ypsomed, a developer and manufacturer of injection and infusion systems for self-medication, this means increasing sales. The company, which is headquartered in Burgdorf, Switzerland, is consistently pursuing its worldwide course of expansion. Most recently, a completely new plant with 13,500 square metres of production space for injection moulding and assembly was built in Schwerin in Northern Germany. At its locations worldwide, Ypsomed produces pens, auto-injectors, and pump systems for administering liquid drugs, such as insulin, for large, brand-name pharmaceutical companies.
New products and manufacturing processes are developed at the company's headquarters. This is also where the company's own mould making and technology centre are located, and where new processes are trialled before they enter series production at the plants worldwide.
More efficiency and safety, as well as greater flexibility and faster industrialisation, were the main arguments which prompted Ypsomed to standardise its production processes in the course of further global expansion. Integrated system solutions by Engel play a key role in the medical technology company's new platform strategy.
The biggest advantage is fast industrialisation
For a long time, the global injection moulding machinery consisted of machines of different types and brands. "This was no longer compatible with our expansion strategy," reported Frank Mengis, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Ypsomed. This explains why, five years ago, a decision was taken to standardise. "The aim of the new platform strategy is to further improve efficiency, safety and quality while simplifying our processes."
“Standardisation is becoming a trend in the medical technology industry, and not only for the big players," Christoph Lhota, vice president, medical business unit with injection moulding machine manufacturer and system solution provider Engel, observed. "Ypsomed is a role model here. At a very early stage, we defined all the specifications in detail together, worked intensively on the performance specifications and then implemented them consistently.”
To date, more than 100 all-electric Engel e-motion injection moulding machines have been supplied to Ypsomed locations worldwide on this basis. The clamping forces vary – 800, 1600, and 2800 kN – but otherwise the machines are identical. Future needs were considered when selecting the options. Not all machines make use of the entire feature set right from the outset. Instead, the aim was to avoid retrofitting and the requalification associated with this later on. In this way, the platform strategy saves a great deal of time and money during operations.
"We can now order injection moulding machines virtually off the peg at all locations worldwide,” said Mengis. "But the biggest advantage is fast industrialisation. The qualification plans are identical for all new machines. This means we can integrate new machines and new processes into series production far faster."
The all-electric e-motion high-performance machines help Ypsomed ensure high-precision, zero-defect production. An important prerequisite for competitive unit costs and trouble-free downstream processing of the injection moulded parts.
Automation on a minimal footprint
The injection moulding machines started everything off. In the meantime, Ypsomed has also started to standardise the automation of injection moulding processes. The e-motion machines are now being equipped with Engelviper linear robots. And the new compact cell by Engel also plays a key role. When developing the compact cell, which was presented for the first time at K 2019, Engel also focused on standardisation. Thanks to its standardised design, the new automation cell makes it particularly easy to integrate a wide variety of automation components and other downstream process units. It encapsulates all the components while remaining significantly narrower than standard safety guarding. "In terms of footprint, the compact cell is unbeatable," emphasised Marlon Trachsel, process manager production technology at Ypsomed in Switzerland.
Uniform control logic for even safer work
Like the machines, all the compact cells use an identical design to achieve maximum flexibility. To avoid having to change the auxiliaries during every mould set-up, the compact cells integrate all components needed for both free-falling parts and for soft depositing using viper robots. The process units for bulk material and soft depositing are arranged one above the other. This helps the compact cell to keep the automation extremely compact. "Where we have five production cells today, there will be six systems after the changeover to the standardised automation cells," reported Trachsel.
Digitalisation drives trend towards servo-electric moulds
Already at the K show, the compact cell was demonstrated with a medical application. Housing parts for medical devices were manufactured on an e-motion injection moulding machine using a two component process with the aim of achieving shorter cycle times. Since the wall thickness of the cylindrical devices cannot be reduced for stability reasons, the two-component process is the only available option for achieving shorter cooling and cycle times. In an eight-cavity mould using Vario Spinstack technology by Hack Formenbau, and featuring a vertical index shaft with four positions, the basic body is first moulded from polypropylene. The second position is used for cooling while another layer of polypropylene is injected at the third position. The parts are removed from the closed mould at the fourth position parallel to the injection moulding process, making an additional contribution to achieving a very short cycle time.
The two-component precision mould has a fully servo-electric drive in this application and uses a software programme newly developed by Engel. This ensures that the servo-electric movements e.g. the core-pulls - can be controlled in the same way as those of hydraulic systems. This means that the user themselves can program the servo-electric movements without the need for additional qualifications. The software sees Engel paving the way for increased use of servo-electric moulds.
"Servo-electric motors offer more possibilities for sensitive monitoring of quality-critical process parameters to enable faults, downtimes and pending maintenance work to be detected at an early stage," Gunnar Hack, managing partner of Hack Formenbau, made clear. At the K show, the Moldlife Sense System by Hack Formenbau demonstrated the huge potential that lies in digitalisation mould technology. Just like intelligent assistance systems, such as iQ weight control or iQ flow control by Engel provide assistance for injection moulding machines, it will also be possible in the future to counteract critical conditions in the mould before rejects are produced or damage occurs due to wear.
Smart assistance and artificial intelligence are increasingly making inroads into injection moulding production, supporting the idea that the system worlds of the injection moulding machine and the mould will collide in the future. This is also a major topic at Ypsomed. Standardisation has already been anchored in the company's digitalisation strategy.