As more global companies strive for lower costs and stronger efficiencies throughout their network of plants and factories, the term "continuous manufacturing" takes on more relevance. At its most basic level, continuous manufacturing strives to connect the whole manufacturing process within a company, such as processing, packaging, and a supply chain within a food company. No data silos.
Automation World magazine reports on many of the tools that help manage "continuous manufacturing," such as Enterprise Resource Planning and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES).
For the pharmaceutical industry, continuous manufacturing includes R&D, drug synthesis, drug production and packaging, and distribution. Global pharmaceutical manufacturers want to link all these disciplines—and link individual plants and share info on an enterprise level—of the drug workflow to reduce costs because of intense price pressure and generic drugs denting profits.
The links below include content centered around the topic, "continuous manufacturing," from articles around the web and Automation World:
• Continuous Manufacturing in Pharma: Beginning to Snowball?
• Process and Packaging: Different Worlds or Just Different Data?
Here's a story about breaking down "walls" between Processing and Packaging.
• Pfizer Global Manufacturing Reconfigures Its Global Network
Here's a story about Pfizer implementing the first stage of a Plant Network Strategy, includes improving plant processes and eliminating excess capacity due to generics.
• Continuous Granulation at AZ: Where It Fits in Tablet Manufacture
--By Grant Gerke, Digital Managing Editor, Automation World
