Counters for bottle filling: What are the problems and can we do something about that?

Pharmaceutical bottle filling technology must meet two chief requirements: high accuracy filling and the quality of filled products. The two technologies used in most pharmaceutical packaging facilities, slat fillers and electronic counters pose different challenges. Slat fillers are an older technology based on the mechanical counting using format parts with cavities with disadvantages around cost, flexibility and lack of quality control by design. Meanwhile, electronic counters can have issues with the accuracy of filling and handling of products with defects. In addition, the design with flaps can lead to miscounts even after the product has been accurately counted. This whitepaper from Sensum weighs up the challenges and risks of the two technologies and explores how visual inspection systems can eliminate the problem of miscounts due to technology and due to product quality.