Supply chain disruptions have forced manufacturers and producers across the globe to reexamine how they source raw materials, inventory, produce, and disseminate what they produce. In an Australasian BioTechnology article, Facilities for a Strong Future, Emerson’s Michalle Adkins and Makarand Mujumdar share how pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturers can improve local capacity to meet the needs of the regions in which they operate.
Michalle and Makarand open by sharing four ways to provide local capacity:
- Operational integrity to ensure successful ongoing facility performance.
- Accelerated capital project delivery to make new capacity available.
- Native manufacturing flexibility so local facilities can be adapted across several therapies – small molecule, large molecule, cell therapy, etc.
- A digital plant strategy to leverage technology in support of both bringing a new plant online and optimizing ongoing operations while delivering required project speed and facility flexibility.
They highlight what drives business objectives for many manufacturers.
Scaling out to increase capacity, bringing in a new therapy quickly, meeting the expanding regulatory compliance requirements, and having a facility that efficiently produces safe ad effective drug productions are key business drivers.
A resilient and long-lasting manufacturing facility requires:
…a digital technology strategy to apply current best practice applications for operations while laying the groundwork for evolving new developments…
From a flexibility standpoint, it:
…is being designed and built into life sciences manufacturing through the design of modular buildings that leverage movable single-use equipment to facilitate easy production process changes.
A flexible control system, such as the DeltaV distributed control system, enables recipe-driven operation:
…where parameterized equipment control is paired with dynamic recipes is a core building block. Built around industry standards, such as ISA88 and NAMUR’s Module Type Package for standardized equipment integration, new life sciences manufacturing facilities can operate with today’s proven paperless electronic batch records while providing the required flexibility for bringing in a new product tomorrow.
Read the article as Michalle and Makarand share ways to drive faster capital projects and improve overall operational integrity.
Visit the Life Sciences & Medical section on Emerson.com for more on ways to improve manufacturing capacity to meet the challenges caused by the current global supply chain disruptions.
