We’ve highlighted the work of Emerson experts in the Biophorum Operations Group in several posts. Its mission:
…is to create environments where the global biopharmaceutical industry can collaborate and accelerate its rate of progress, for the benefit of all.
Emerson’s Sean Buckley alerted me to three recently published documents that he helped develop. These documents include:
I’ll do quick introductions of each one in separate blog posts, starting today with the MES of the Future Manifesto. Sean and Kate Porter from Emerson collaborated with others on this work with requirements for Manufacturing Execution Systems. In the executive summary, the authors highlight current issues facing biopharmaceutical manufacturers.
- The biomanufacturing industry is facing unprecedented challenges in meeting demand, reducing costs and increasing manufacturing quality across current drug portfolios
- New classes of biological medicines are being developed which require a radical shift in manufacturing processes
- Industry must digitize and automate manufacturing processes and make full use of new manufacturing and digital technologies. Key to this digitization of biomanufacturing plants is the role of MES solutions
- Current MES solutions can be expensive, slow to implement and lack the flexibility/agility/openness to be updated and supported efficiently
- Current approaches are not suitable for certain biomanufacturing scenarios, e.g. small-scale and/or low-cost manufacturing plants and for new biomanufacturing modalities such as those for cell & gene therapies (CGTs)
- The biomanufacturing industry has not created a common view on future MES requirements to support the development of new products/ services from MES vendors.
For biomanufacturers, the benefits they can expect to see from MES systems developed to the requirements outlined in this work include:
- Speed/cost benefits through improved approach to system update/deployment
- Zero downtime
- Greater data availability
- Improved flexibility of use and deployment through:
- Modular approaches to let manufacturers choose only the features they need
- Streamlined software licensing models for better cost efficiency
- ‘MES-lite’ and other alternatives available for regional/small manufacturing sites and new modality of biomanufacturing, e.g. Cell and Gene Therapies (including cloud-based deployments)
- MES vendor understanding of industry needs built into product roadmaps
- Flexible and open integration mechanisms such as low-code/no-code interfaces allowing for future-ready, user-driven system integrations
- Efficient tech transfer through system integration across clinical development and commercial manufacturing.
If you’re not already a BioPhorum member, you can freely register to download the MES of the Future Manifesto to read about the requirements in detail.
Visit the Life Sciences & Medical section on Emerson.com for more on the technologies and solutions to help you address these challenges and drive business performance improvements.
