Very interesting day for my work. I work in Industrial Process Control, basically the systems which run a plant and have worked in a few of the largest Pharmaceutical Plants in the world.
Earlier today I was part of a very interesting discussion among the major companies that do this type of work in the world.
Here is the basic idea:
5 Companies (very large) are starting to do the Design for Pharma plants without knowing exactly what parts will be involved. All Pharmaceutical Plants have very standard Unit Operations, Fermenters, Wet Side, Pilling, etc. We are going to start to do the engineering without having the specific information on how the drugs will be created, so design "Generically".
Once a product is picked, the generic design can then be instantiated to a specific specification.
The idea is that this would save months, possibly even years, in the manufacturing of a facility to create drugs.
This may all sound simple, but trust me it is not in any way. These 5 companies, are, for lack of a better word, enemies. They all provide different Control Systems for the plants, and they are HIGHLY proprietary in their design against each other (Emerson, Siemens, Honeywell, Rockwell and ABB). For these companies to work together is revolutionary, unique and honestly may not be good for anyone's bottom line. That said, the shocking amount of knowledge on that teleconference this morning (more than 180 people worldwide) basically is all of this planets knowledge in how to make something in a factory. I was an "observer" in this discussion, only 15 people had permission to speak.
Nice to see. Nice to hear, I hope it all comes off.
