We help our customers create future-ready pharma manufacturing and biotech facilities
Sanjay Sudhakaran, VP, Digital Energy, Schneider Electric India expands on the value proposition of digital energy systems for the pharma sector, giving some examples of how companies achieved RoI on this investment, in an interaction with Viveka Roychowdhury
The pharmaceutical sector was one of the sectors which had to work through lockdowns, with less staff and sometimes more production. This has spurred many companies to think of the contactless way to maintenance, i.e. remote maintenance. What is the value proposition of digital energy systems for the pharma sector?
While many pharma companies had already started to build their digital capabilities, the government imposed lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic has further spurred the adoption of digital technology in the sector. Many companies see this as an opportunity as they are going contactless to manage operations such as maintenance, supply chain management, production etc. For plant managers in the pharma industry achieving energy efficiency is a strategic goal. Achieving energy efficiency reduces manufacturing costs as well as its environmental emissions.
At Schneider Electric, we provide the best conditions for manufacturing operations in pharma companies through our environmental management system.
With this, we help our customers create future-ready pharma manufacturing and biotech facilities while making the production environment comply with requirements and regulations.
We also enable guided remote maintenance using our solution that helps our customer to automate operation and progress toward predictive maintenance.
Besides, this system records data in a tamper-resistant, high-integrity format with store-and-forward functionality, for reliable regulatory auditing.
What are the costs and timelines to deployment?
We offer our clients future-ready life sciences solutions to help them design a strategy, deliver efficiency in their facilities and sustain results over time through long-term partnerships. We offer adaptable architecture to our customers allowing them to select segregated or integrated BMS and EMS architectures dependent on-site requirements.
Our flexible architecture optimises OpEx costs with straightforward accessibility to the BMS segment compared to integrated architecture. Our customers can achieve reduced risks and costs in a stringent and evolving regulatory framework.
What are the levels of services and engagement with companies?
The vendor-agnostic services provided by our skilled professionals protect our customer’s entire critical infrastructure, helping to assess risk, implement cyber-specific solutions and maintain onsite defence over time. Availing these services our customers can avoid costly regulatory fines and actions and secondly, apply cybersecurity solutions from operations perspective while integrating appropriate IT policies and requirements
Can you give some use case examples of the ROI of some of these systems deployed?
Definitely, one of our most successful customer stories is of Boston Scientific, a worldwide developer, manufacturer, and marketer of medical devices. They opened a new corporate headquarters and integrated EcoStruxure Building Advisor as part of a strategic initiative to reduce energy waste and work towards creating a more sustainable corporate campus. Boston Scientific has achieved a 40 per cent reduction in avoidable cost related to faults. Our solution points issues, trends and averages. It also prioritises issues and suggests actions which have resulted in a 51 per cent reduction in the energy-related faults at Boston Scientific.
Another story is about Xcellerex, a revolutionary biopharma products and vaccines manufacturer, faced with the greatest challenge of integrating complex technology with ultra-high levels of functionality. With our EcoStruxure solution, they have achieved a higher level of efficiency in their plant in terms of capital investment reduction exceeding 60 per cent and lower overall cost of finished products by 32 per cent.