As the pharmaceutical industry begins to automate manufacturing processes, many companies are looking to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to provide a way to more efficiently transfer information. While the IIoT provides a viable method for automating the flow of data, the concept of and security risks associated with cloud-based data storage is still new to many in the industry. Pharmaceutical Technology sat down with Ben Blanchette, director of Strategy and Business Development for IIoT, and Torsten Winkler, lead of the Life Sciences Center of Excellence in EMEA, both at Honeywell Process Solutions; Dave Sharpe, global industry director, and Tony Baker, security lead, both at Rockwell Automation; and Lee Sullivan, regional manager, COPA-DATA UK Ltd to discuss IIoT and its impact on pharmaceutical manufacturing. One of the answers was: the intention of IIoT is not to increase the position of a process analytical technology (PAT) controller, or real regulatory control, but the IIoT gives you the infrastructure in a validated environment that reduces cost for validation to achieve the initiative, for example FDA’s PAT initiative. This means you can collect manual data more easily, do something with this [data], and the result is available for control. That means you can set up in a better or easier way multi-variable modeling, for example, or you can do indirect measurements. In a biopharmaceutical plant, it is relatively impossible to measure the quality of the products, but you can indirectly measure this information. That way you make this information and results more easily available for real control. The umbrella is the infrastructure to fulfill the PAT initiative.

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• COPA-DATA

• Honeywell

• Rockwell

• Automation

• IIoT

• Pharmaceutical Technology

• 3/2/2017

• Article