zenon COPA-DATA - Simplified production of herbal medicines at A. Vogel (Switzerland)

A. Vogel AG produces high-quality herbal natural remedies at its site in Roggwil, Switzerland. REY AUTOMATION was commissioned with the extensive expansion of production capacities and modernisation. They smoothly implemented the zenon software platform as control technology, in compliance with GMP guidelines.

The use of natural plant extracts to promote health is booming. For the company A. Vogel AG, founded in 1963 by naturopathy pioneer Dr. Alfred Vogel, the use of freshly harvested plants for tinctures and salts has always been a high priority. One of the company's key objectives is to process the medicinal plants into high-quality medicinal products within 24 hours of harvesting. The routes and processes must therefore be correspondingly short and efficient. The production, filling and storage of natural remedies and food supplements are also subject to the strict guidelines of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). The precise documentation of the manufacturing processes is just as important to the Swiss company as the clear presentation of machine sequences for the employees involved.

Extract the healing power of plants

COPA-DATA Silver Partner REY AUTOMATION AG was commissioned with the expansion of the A. Vogel production site in Roggwil. The task was to build a new plant for pressing and dissolving the health-promoting ingredients from the plants. In two mixers with a capacity of 4,000 and 6,000 litres respectively, the plants are mixed with water and ethanol according to a recipe and blended. The resulting mash is then transferred to two presses. In order not to leave the cavity in the mixers with an explosive gas mixture, it has to be overlaid with nitrogen. This process is called inerting. In this process, the oxygen content of the combustible mixture is reduced to such an extent that self-ignition can be prevented. This also complies with the most important EU directives for explosion protection (ATEX).

Once the ingredients have been discharged from the presses and the extract is available for further processing and filling, the automated cleaning-in-place (CIP) completes the process. In order to have the mixers ready for the next batch as soon as possible and to be able to process the next medicinal plants quickly after harvesting and without mixing them with the ingredients of previous extractions, this final CIP process plays an important role.

GMP-compliant to the highest quality

The nature-oriented philosophy of its founder is very important to A. Vogel AG. In the production facilities in Switzerland, the Netherlands and France, a total of 800 tonnes of fresh plant tinctures and 700 tonnes of fresh herbal salts are produced per year. To ensure that the ingredients are preserved in their natural purity for the end consumer, the manufacturing processes must comply with the GMP standard, thus ensuring easy validation. Good manufacturing practice for medicinal products specifies requirements in particular for hygiene, the premises used, the equipment used, the documentation of all operations and the control processes. In order not to need any additional special programming for this, the system integrator REY AUTOMATION decided to use zenon. "From recipe handling for the production of the various end products to the cleaning of the mixers by means of a CIP process, we were able to offer a suitable solution with zenon out of the box and GMP-compliant in the sense of the customer," explains Michael Rey, CEO of REY AUTOMATION AG.

Modern technology for proven remedies

It was important to those responsible at A. Vogel that the process control functions of the software used were also coupled with clear data collection and documentation of all events. "Both the operation of our new plant and the validation according to GMP specifications, which is so important for us, have been implemented very simply and successfully with zenon", explains Stefan Bauer, Production Manager at A. Vogel AG.

The diverse interfaces and native communication protocols of zenon also made it easy to connect the SIMATIC S7-1515-2 PN PLC and the SIMATIC ET 200SP IO system. Standard functionalities in zenon such as the convenient trend module for monitoring production values as well as the extensive filter options in the alarm and event list also proved to be very useful. At the customer's request, REY AUTOMATION created a dashboard with zenon that summarises and clearly displays the production parameters (e.g. batch number and manufacturing key figures), plant parameters (e.g. duration, intensity and angle of agitation) and CIP parameters (e.g. cleaning speed and duration). Detailed analyses and insights into the processes as well as a close look at the status of the plants are thus possible at any time. Thanks to the openness of zenon, an SQL or SAP connection could also be added in the future to achieve vertical consistency of the production data.