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Distributed control system supports CMO’s surge in drug production during the pandemic

By Brian Buntz | December 17, 2021

NovaTechIn the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) quickly expanded its manufacturing capacity at its Greenville, North Carolina plant to meet demand. The expansion involved adding a new production suite, safeguarding quality, and enabling sufficient production flexibility.

During the expansion, the plant upgraded its existing Distributed Control System (DCS) to support the production of two vital pharmaceuticals during the pandemic. The first was for the antiviral drug Veklury (remdesivir) from Gilead Sciences (NSDQ:GILD). FDA approved Veklury to treat patients with COVID-19 needing hospitalization. Thermo Fisher Scientific retooled the plant to manufacture the EUA-authorized Moderna (NSDQ:MRNA) COVID-19 vaccine.

When retooling their plant, Thermo Fisher upgraded their DCS, which supports the production, conveying and handling of pharmaceuticals.

Vials

Image courtesy of NovaTech Automation

In late 2020, boosting the manufacturing of antivirals for those hospitalized with COVID-19 was critical, according to Chris Gepfert, regional sales and MSR channel manager at NovaTech LLC Process Division. Gepfert was involved in the DCS implementation of Thermo Fisher’s Greenville facility. Gepfert said that this process involved adding a new production line, requiring on-site construction and FDA testing.

The plant already used NovaTech’s D/3 DCS and management. The CMO decided to use the distributed control system in the new suite expansions. The system shows real-time process information via a high-performance graphical human-machine interface (HMI).

The CMO and NovaTech worked together to support the need for flexibility in the new suite expansions, according to Gepfert. When the CMO landed a high-volume vaccine contract, the plant’s DCS system could handle the production boost.

Gepfert notes that for high-volume production of this sort, CMOs often require automation to bolster production and reduce operator involvement while reducing the potential error rate.

The DCS uses a modern I/O system, the 8000 series platform, a remote I/O family native integrated with the D/3 System. The combination supports enhanced automation with improved diagnostics, troubleshooting and asset management capability.

Vials

Image courtesy of NovaTech Automation

The system supports significant batch process control and automation, with the Sequence and Batch Language (SABL) that the D/3 controllers use. It also supports an S88-based layered batch management package called FlexBatch.

Because the pandemic has disrupted routine CMO production planning, a DCS needs to be flexible and capable of supporting required changes to vaccine and therapeutic manufacture rapidly and easily, Gepfert said.

About The Author

Brian Buntz

The pharma and biotech editor of WTWH Media, Brian is a veteran journalist with more than 15 years of experience covering an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, drug discovery and development and medical devices. Before coming to WTWH, he served as content director focused on connected devices at Informa. In addition, Brian covered the medical device sector for 10 years at UBM. At Qmed, he overhauled the brand’s news coverage and helped to grow the site’s traffic volume dramatically. He had previously held managing editor roles on two of the company’s medical device technology publications. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email at bbuntz@wtwhmedia.com.

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