Pharmaceutical trade journal PROCESS reports: Stainless steel control cabinet for hygienic areas

Item no. 2983

PharmaTEC trade article - Tailor-made control cabinet for high hygiene requirements

Description

Online article in the trade journal PROCESS
Stainless steel control cabinet: Tailor-made control cabinet for high hygiene requirements
Switchgear in the clean room can quickly become a germ-hole. Only designs without gaps, joints and other dead spaces meet the high hygiene requirements in pharmaceutical production. A special design with a trackball keyboard integrated into the front panel now meets the strict requirements of a vaccine manufacturer.
Tailor-made control cabinet for high hygiene requirements
Stainless steel control cabinet
Tailor-made control cabinet for high hygiene requirements
Switchgear in the clean room can quickly become a germ-hole. Only designs without gaps, joints and other dead spaces meet the high hygiene requirements in pharmaceutical production. A special design with a trackball keyboard integrated into the front panel now meets the strict requirements of a vaccine manufacturer.
Stainless steel control cabinets are standard in hygienic processes in the pharmaceutical industry. However, constructions designed for high-pressure cleaning carry a contamination risk that should not be underestimated: high protection classes are often bought by dead-space-prone labyrinth constructions. A clean alternative is offered by an enclosure specially designed for OEM applications.
For a customer in the pharmaceutical industry, the engineers of a manufacturer of high-performance control and switching systems developed a special switching system that is used for the production of vaccines.
For more than 20 years, the company has been producing stainless steel equipment for hygiene-sensitive production processes in particular.
Trackball keyboard as additional input option
The hygiene requirements in vaccine production are high, so it was important to the pharmaceutical customer that the workstation could be cleaned quickly and easily. The overall system should be designed in such a way that the multiplication of biologically active material is largely prevented and the products can be easily cleaned or sterilised at a specific location. On the other hand, the customer required an additional input alternative to the touch system, as users in the cleanroom always work with gloves and protective equipment. Here, a pure touch function would quickly reach its limits. A TVG-38 trackball keyboard integrated into the front panel was to provide a remedy.
Cleaning ability decides
The pharmaceutical industry is usually not served by off-the-shelf apparatus and systems. The contract for the production of the OEM process plant was awarded to a specialist for control cabinets based in Rhineland-Palatinate and a manufacturer of industrial keyboards from Upper Bavaria. They scored points for ease of operation, optimal cleanability, and resistance of the system to steam and other cleaning-in-place (CIP) agents, such as acidic and alkaline cleaning agents.
The combination of the data input modules, consisting of a capacitive touch screen and the sterile TVG-38 trackball module, not only ensures a sustainably pleasant feel, but also guarantees precise control. And this was crucial for the operators of the system: after all, they have to keep the process running every day under the most difficult conditions, wearing gloves and protective equipment.
Hygienic design without gaps and joints increases product safety
The OEM stainless steel workstation was developed in such a way that it could be attached to the desk cover without gaps and waterproof and the trackball keyboard could be integrated without cracks. The stainless steel unit does without lift keys and thus avoids hygienically questionable gaps and cracks. Because: Wherever water or liquid penetrates the control cabinet, micro-organisms such as bacteria, yeasts or moulds also find their way into the interior. The heat loss from the control system also increases the risk of contamination inside the enclosure. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
To eliminate dead space in the system and in the piping from the outset, the control cabinet specialist has worked with smooth, polished and sealed surfaces. Every angle is less than 90°, gaps and crevices have been avoided and there are no landings or pipe connections that are not covered. Dead spaces are very difficult and costly to clean, this is well known in the industry. Automated processes (SIP-Sterilize-in-Place /CIP-Clean-in-Place) usually do not reach these areas, which means that all surfaces of a process plant that come into contact with the product have to be sterilised and cleaned by employees at great expense. "Cross-contamination can occur through contact with media that come into contact with the product or the product itself, which can often lead to the destruction of the entire batch, especially in the case of pharmaceutical products," the experts at keyboard manufacturer GeBE Computer & Peripherie also know.
Adapt instead of replace
It doesn't matter whether the customer produces vaccines with the system developed for him or uses it for other production processes: Basically, the systems are very variable and can be quickly adapted to a wide range of applications.

Pharmaceutical trade journal PROCESS reports: Stainless steel control cabinet for hygienic areas

Description

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