(1241-B) Bridging the Gap between Industrial and Lab Automation

Abstract: The accelerated development of new drug candidates has driven the adoption of novel concepts and technologies in pharmaceutical development and manufacturing. Automation technologies are increasingly being used in the development of therapeutics across the pharmaceutical industry to collect, analyze, and interpret an immense amount of process data that would otherwise be inaccessible. These aspects help minimize the time and costs associated with pharmaceutical development and manufacture and bring medicines to patients more effectively.

As an example of these technologies, AbbVie’s Custom Automation Group in Process R&D designed a new controls platform to expedite the deployment of automated solutions. The new platform incorporates the novel use of Opto22 GroovRIO controller devices integrated with an Ignition SCADA as the user interface and backup data historian. The Ignition SCADA is a standard off the shelf web-based application that will allow flexibility to scientists to monitor and control their experiments remotely. The platform uses a publish-subscribe architecture with MQTT as the core communication component enabling data transfer from the SCADA to the multiple controllers and the final data repository OSI-PI.

In the past, lab automation in SM CMC was primarily developed as stand-alone solutions using low-cost controllers designed for consumer-grade applications like Arduinos and Raspberry Pis or developing computer-based solutions using serial communication to interface with devices. Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) were developed in high-level programming languages requiring higher proficiency. Due to these factors, users heavily relied on the original developer for software modifications and support.

This presentation will share AbbVie’s strategy and experiences integrating said platform into process development and discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with our approaches.