I caught up the other day with Emerson’s Shenling Yang, who is a senior project execution engineer in the Life Sciences and Food & Beverage (LSFB) industry group. You may recall Shenling from earlier posts.
She shared two pieces of news with me. The first is that the Critical Data Backup application developed by the LSFB team, and used for protection of DeltaV automation system configuration and critical process data, has been extended to the Syncade operations management software. Shenling has been working on a project with a pharmaceutical manufacturer implementing this application.
In one of the earlier posts with Shenling, Backing Up and Recovering Critical Control System Data, the goal of a biotech manufacturer was total recovery from a system failure in hours instead of weeks. For highly regulated industries, the scenario described was:
…the dreaded 3 am phone call from the plant with the news that production has stopped, people standing around and it’s up to you to do something. Choice one is to go to the plant, to rebuild the automation system configuration, to revalidate the process, to lose a bioreactor batch that may have been running for up to 100 days, and then to hopefully resume production within a few weeks.
The Critical Data Backup application was the solution:
…to meet the 21CFR Part 11 compliance for backup, recovery and preservation of electronic records. It’s a part of the overall disaster recovery plan, which includes files, spare on-site server hardware, physical separation of equipment and networks, and always-available support personnel on-site.
With the ISA95 Enterprise-Control System Integration standard, this critical backup need extends to level 3. The Critical Data Backup covers some of the Syncade Suite modules including: Document Control & Archiving, Security & Audit, Equipment Tracking, Batch Production Record, Recipe Authoring, Training and Development, and Manufacturing Information Portal. The backup extends beyond the operational and configuration data to include backup reports, style sheets, and behaviors.
I did mention there were two pieces of news. The second is that Shenling is moving to Shanghai to work with the Emerson Asia Pacific marketing team. She’s promised to help me discover and tell stories of all the great work being done by our experts in China. I look forward to being able to broaden out the view of these Emerson experts around the world.
Safe travels and best of success in your new assignment, Shenling! And, make sure to show this post around to everyone that we’ve promised our readers some good stories.