The facility is designed to handle medical products, including prescription and over the counter pharmaceuticals. In compliance with life science industry requirements such as the Good Distribution Practice (GDP) regulations, the internal environment of this facility is controlled to protect products that are processed every day.
The requirement to update the monitoring network was prompted by a previous supplier’s ‘end of life’ notification in early 2022. Vaisala provided its wireless continuous monitoring and alarm system ViewLinc.
PostNord TPLS’s project manager Tina Fritzson said: “First and foremost, the new monitoring network needed to fulfil our GDP requirements. To achieve this, it needed to be accurate and reliable because the previous system had regularly delivered false alarms, which wasted a lot of time. In addition, the requirement for wiring should be minimal, and ideally, the system should be intuitive so that it is simple to operate.”
Vaisala sales manager Janne Halonen said: “It was clear from our first meeting that we would be able to offer PostNord TPL a significantly superior system. viewLinc is more than capable of meeting their key requirements, and our validation service provides all of the necessary information to demonstrate GDP compliance.”
“In early 2022 PostNord TPL provided us with floorplans so that we were able to build a detailed proposal to meet their precise requirements,” he added. “Later that year, we were delighted to be awarded the contract, which included the installation and commissioning of 102 sensors monitoring a 30 000 m2 warehouse. Most of the sensors are monitoring temperature and humidity in this very large facility, but some are also deployed in refrigerated areas that have to maintain certain pharmaceutical products between 2 to 8 °C.”
Reflecting on the system’s performance to date, Halonen said: “Since installation, the viewLinc system has worked very well, and I am confident that we have exceeded PostNord TPL’s expectations. In addition to reliable GDP compliance with a full audit trail, one of the main benefits of the system has been problem-free operation – the old system used to deliver false alarms on a daily basis, but of course that no longer happens.
“Ease of use is also a major advantage; we typically find that new operators require less than an hour’s training. A further feature, that I know PostNord TPL has found useful, is viewLinc’s facility to define the path for alarm messages so that only those that need to be alerted are notified.”
The Vaisala data loggers gather readings, and the data is transferred to a central server by Vaisala’s proprietary VaiNet wireless technology. VaiNet access points create links between Ethernet and Vaisala devices, and whenever a new data logger is added to the system, it is automatically identified by an access point, which forwards the data logger’s information to the server. Once accepted by the system, data loggers remain synchronised, and redundancy is achieved by allowing load distribution between VaiNet access points which share multiple in-range data loggers. The Vaisala loggers also store data for 30 days to protect data integrity in case there is a network outage. The system is managed by Vaisala’s viewLinc enterprise server software, which assimilates the data, providing alarms, real-time data trends and GDP compliance reports. Users can access the viewLinc system with any web-enabled device, and security is maintained with encrypted communications and automatic data origin checks.
Vaisala’s RFL100 data loggers at PostNord TPL are equipped with probes containing either temperature sensors or sensors for both temperature and humidity. The probes are detachable and simple to switch out for calibration. The viewLinc software detects probe changes and automatically updates the probe information to maintain historical records.