How Digital Manufacturing is Transforming Pharma Industry

The pharma companies are applying digital manufacturing to lower their expenses and increase quality.

FREMONT, CA: Nowadays, pharmaceutical managers are struggling with increasing uncertainty, expenses, and regulation, due to which more of them are looking at the development of Industry 4.0 as a solution. Data and machine learning operated by smart autonomous factories can lower pharmaceutical manufacturing expenses, increase quality, and decrease capacity constraints.

Most pharmaceutical companies have been slowly embracing digital manufacturing tools as they are concerned that their systems, data, and people were not ready. But several have concluded that further delay is not an option and have started to experiment with solutions from Industry 4.0. Pharmaceutical executives expect smart connected factories to generate savings of 20 percent or more, thus enhancing the quality and making deliveries more efficient. In particular, a 17 percent decrease in costs related to lower quality, a 15 percent reduction in the price of processing raw materials into drugs, and a 14 percent rise in delivery reliability.

Regulatory reforms, generic drug proliferation, and more personalized medicine put pharmaceuticals' profits at risk and make a strong case for digital production. Smaller but more frequent drug releases increase the difficulty and cost of production.

The advent of customized medicine with drugs made for each patient will lead to a complicated procedure. Moreover, the widespread utilization of generic drug use is driving prices down.

Production performance manager 

To generate an overview of the entire production system, including every unit's state, this solution collects near-real-time data from manufacturing equipment. Managers evaluating the system from end-to-end will easily detect issues and performance deficiencies. They can use data to understand the root causes. Implementing a production-performance manager will be easy for the businesses that already have a manufacturing execution system (MES) installed and utilize lean manufacturing techniques.

Advanced analytics for predictive maintenance 

Utilizing the data available from the sensor to identify breakdown patterns, like which part of the machine fails, the type of breakdown, and when this instrument can predict issues in advance. It offers production teams the opportunity to maintain machinery before it breaks down. The warning reduces manufacturing losses and helps to avoid costly repairs. Furthermore, optimizing the maintenance frequency also reduces its cost.