Consumers expect a certain consistency in quality and taste from the food and beverage brands they love. But many factors can influence the way a product tastes when it reaches the consumer – ranging from the manufacturing process to seasonality of ingredients to storage temperatures. Similarly, a number of other factors may influence the overall quality attributes that matter, such as alcohol content of beer or stability of the whiskey aging process.
In the midst of a global crisis, many industrial manufacturing operations— including those in the chemical industry— are faced with shortages of supplies and equipment, or staff reductions, and finding it difficult to keep operations working as normal. Are there process improvements or tools that can be used to manage production more efficiently during this time of COVID-19 (and moving forward)?
While many other industries have implemented multivariate data analysis software for process optimization and control, it is still not very common in the pulp and paper industry. However, multivariate data analysis has a very promising potential for both cost reductions and quality improvements in pulp and paper mills. No capital investments are needed, the implementation can be done remotely, and the software typically requires no permits.
Out of control processes in pharma manufacturing are not something to take lightly. If your production runs are seeing frequent deviations, leading to expensive batch losses or frequent rework, it’s time to take a look at ways to correct any process deviations in a more expedient manner. Uncorrected deviations or processes that vary from approved process parameters can lead to costly and dangerous mistakes.
Keeping your pharmaceutical manufacturing processes under control is important not only to ensure a quality product, but also for regulatory compliance. Process or raw material deviations can affect the downstream quality of a product and could mean tossing out an entire batch or end product if process corrections aren’t made soon enough — or if you can’t document that a correction was made before it affected your critical quality attributes.
For pharmaceutical manufacturers, a process deviation may not only mean a bad batch that affects a downstream process, it can also risk a regulatory violation that leads to fines or expensive market setback, or worse, it could endanger the health of the patient.
Several trends in the food and beverage industry are leading to challenges for manufacturers that can be best addressed with data analytics. With growing digitalization, more companies have access to the kinds of data that can transform their processes to meet the latest consumer demands as well as to shorten time to market, reduce costs, and shrink health and safety risks.
In industries ranging from biopharmaceuticals to chemicals, executives in today’s manufacturing marketplace face ever-increasing pressures to grow profit margins, reduce time to market and optimize processes across all aspects of their business. Everything from constraints in the supply of raw materials to multiple steps in a manufacturing process can affect productivity—making process optimization an amorphous target.
Advancements in cell and gene therapy hold promise for the future of personalized medicine, especially for cancer treatments. However, bioprocessing methods for autologous cellular therapies, and CAR-T in particular, often present unique challenges in manufacturing due to the variability of the starting material and unique nature of each batch. Is there a way to create more efficient processes in order to bring down costs and make personalized medicine a viable option for more patients?
In a manufacturing setting where consistent quality matters, variability in how individual technicians and operators perform their jobs can be frustrating for managers. Companies need a way to achieve consistent quality, without reducing the capacity for innovation and improvement.
You may have heard the term Six Sigma used in conjunction with lean manufacturing, a Kaizen approach or continuous quality improvement. Perhaps you thought Six Sigma only applied to large-scale business operations, or that newer philosophies had overtaken Six Sigma as the most updated approach to quality management? But if you're looking for a way to improve your production processes or solve a problem you’re having with quality, Six Sigma might be the answer. Are you and your team familiar with these concepts? Here's an overview.
In bioprocessing today, a shift is happening that takes the ability to monitor, optimize and control processes to the next level. Whereas in the past manufacturers aspired to measure data in order to find out why a bioprocess action happened (using descriptive and diagnostic analytics), today we are able to use predictive analytics to determine what will happen in a bioprocess based on specific process data measured in real-time. This migration “up the food chain” to a higher level of data analytics requires automation, ongoing process monitoring and the ability to make adjustments in real-time.
