IS INDUSTRY 4.0 PROMISING THE MOON?

As pharma grapples with rising complexity, costs and regulation, the sector is looking to industry 4.0 manufacturing as a solution. Smart factories managed with next generation technologies will lower pharma manufacturing costs, improve quality and reduce capacity constraints. Let’s look at how pharma is adopting industry 4.0.

- Ayesha Siddiqui

"The capabilities of vendors and service providers are evolving. The existing set up needs manufacturing to be revamped completely to accommodate future ready systems. The talent is also limited in the market." -

Aditya Sharma, Head, Bioprocessing, Merck Life Science India

As pharma shifts from generic drugs to personalised medicines, it has become apparent that conventional systems lack the capabilities to keep up with complex manufacturing processes. Traditional manufacturing technology was built for large-scale, standardised drug batches. That’s why the industry is turning to much faster and more agile solutions. They’re leveraging the predictive capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to build smarter, more secure, and future-ready manufacturing centres. Redesigning the traditional Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) cleanroom to accommodate closed and automated processes is a necessary step toward improving the cost and quality of tomorrow’s medicines.