The robot flexibly unwraps the film of the medicine bottle packaging box, and the small medicine bottle is passed into the device from the conveyor belt. Bottle management, bottle washing, sterilization, filling, stuffing… A process in the robot and the tacit cooperation of the conveyor belt orderly progress. In less than a minute, the finished medicine bottles lined up… This is the scene close-up of Chutian Technology’s smart medicine production line, and it is also the epitome of the “intelligent manufacturing” of the world’s pharmaceutical industry.

From abandoned cattle sheds to the international stage. After more than 20 years of development, Chutian Technology has become one of the well-known enterprises in the world’s medical equipment industry, and its products are exported to more than 40 countries and regions such as Asia, Europe and South America, and its international market share is rapidly increasing year by year.

Industry pain point: high efficiency and high quality

“The pharmaceutical equipment industry has high added value and high technological content, which is not only related to the development of science and technology, but also benefits the people’s livelihood.” Tang Yue, chairman and president of Chutian Technology, said that the medical equipment industry is related to life, health and safety, and must be in a race with time to ensure quality.

Tang Yue (third from left), chairman and president of Chutian Technology, at the delivery site of equipment for large-scale production of COVID-19 vaccine

“It’s either the only one or the first.” 23 years ago, Chutian Technology started from zero and went all the way to today, becoming a leading enterprise in China’s medical equipment industry and a well-known enterprise in the world’s medical equipment industry, which can be summarized in eight words – hard work and innovation.

Especially after settling in Ningxiang, Chutian Technology changed the extensive “market leader” strategy in the early stage of entrepreneurship, systematically laid out technological innovation breakthroughs, and committed to sprinting to the commanding heights of the industry with excellent technological innovation capabilities.

“The focus is on targeting pain points in the production of pharmaceutical companies, and constantly improving the quality of drug production through technological innovation to better serve public health.” Since its establishment, Chutian Technology has carried out research and innovation around many pain points such as improving the quality of drug production and improving the operating environment of pharmaceutical enterprises, constantly expanding and strengthening the biomedical industry chain, and taking the lead in promoting the research and development of smart pharmaceutical factories.

Solution: Focus on pharmaceutical pain points continuous collaborative innovation

The cooperation between Chutian Technology and Mitsubishi Electric can be traced back to the beginning of the business. Since the beginning of in-depth cooperation in 2005, Mitsubishi Electric has closely followed the development trend of the medical equipment industry, accurately insight into the development demands of Chutian technology, and help Chutian Technology to grow step by step and go to the future.

An attempt to develop a new vision

In 2006, Chutian Technology against European and American enterprises, began to develop and manufacture linear full servo drive filling and plugging machine, for the batch flexible production of antibiotics.

Chutian Technology linear full servo drive filling and plugging machine

Based on the field investigation and in-depth understanding of the production process, Mitsubishi Electric proposed the solution of “MELSEC Q series PLC (equipped with motion controller and positioning module) +MR-J2S series servo motor”. This solution not only provides the virtual mode synchronization function to solve the pain point of the unstable servo tracking of the device, but also provides the phase compensation function when the synchronous encoder makes the virtual spindle, which is further adapted to other types of pharmaceutical equipment of Chutian Technology.

After the plan was clear, Mitsubishi Electric immediately started the production and installation of the control board and sent it to the customer site in Dalian at the first time. The team has been sent twice to in-depth field debugging, which takes more than 20 days before and after, successfully improving the synchronization accuracy and production stability of the equipment.

“Mitsubishi Electric’s high-end products suddenly opened our eyes.” Li Xinhua, the person in charge of the project development of Chutian Technology at that time, recalled that Mitsubishi Electric not only helped Chutian Technology perfectly complete product delivery, but also completed the product update and iteration, shortened the technical gap with foreign products, and accelerated the layout of Chutian technology in the high-end market and the expansion of the international market.

Secondary development of customized functions

In 2020, in order to meet the needs of liquid drug batch filling, Chutian Technology started the development of new filling equipment. In the face of pressure from competitors, Chutian Technology must complete the development of this product in a short period of time, while the performance must exceed the competitors.