DTI funds new manufacturing model

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has given a prestigious grant to a consortium seeking to develop a system through which biopharmaceutical manufacturers can accelerate the development of their products.

The consortium, which is led by BioPharm Services Ltd and supported by other industry stakeholders, is undertaking a three-year project to develop a knowledge management model to help biopharma manufacturers bring new products from development to manufacture by ensuring consistency, speeding development and reducing errors.

The new model will seek to enhance companies’ manufacturing processes by identifying more cost-effective options that minimise capital investment and maximise asset utilization, according to the project’s leader, Andrew Sinclair, of BioPharm.

“Product development in this industry can take anything up to nine years,” said Sinclair, the company’s managing director. “We are aware that many biopharmaceutical manufacturers are failing to capitalise on the benefits of experience gained both across and within projects.

“Currently data on process, manufacturing, plant performance and costs all exist in isolation. We want to link those datasets to create a powerful, integrated decision support tool.”

He added that the consortium is developing a software platform that will allow scientists, engineers, business managers and marketing people to access and use data from a central database to support business, manufacturing protocols, validation documentation, product data and all the other documentation a company needs to bring a product to market.

The software, he said, will help provide benchmarking of best practice and make it easier for firms to identify crucial success factors.