Avec Genersys, Octapharma Lingolsheim assure une surveillance « sans faille » de son environnement de production, 24h/24 et 7j/7 ! #2
Octapharma selects Genersys, a specialist in smart building management, to implement a new supervisory architecture for its production operations. This system ensures continuous monitoring of processes and the production environment, allowing for swift action in response to any alerts.
Benfeld, January 11, 2023 – For 40 years, Octapharma has been producing plasma-derived medicines to serve patients and healthcare professionals in 118 countries. This industrial group specializes in three key therapeutic areas: hematology, immunology, and emergency medicine. Octapharma is the world’s fourth-largest operator in blood-derived medicinal products (BDMs), with 45 subsidiaries & offices, 9,900 employees, 5 production facilities and 180 plasma collection centers in Europe and the United States. To increase immunoglobulin production, the Group is investing in its Lingolsheim pilot plant to double its production capacity by 2025. To achieve this, the Group is installing a new production line at its existing plant and relocating its raw materials storage operations to the Parc des Tanneries.
To maximize equipment availability and deliver flawless process quality, Octapharma Lingolsheim, leveraging Genersys’ expertise, has completely redesigned its alarm monitoring and control system, enhancing both reliability and responsiveness in its production environment. Going forward, the 900 monthly alarms generated by the 80 Trend Control Systems PLCs across both sites are transmitted to the IQvision supervision software and the ALERT system, each running on separate servers for enhanced reliability. As a result, maintenance or on-call operators can be sure of receiving alert notifications directly on their Ascom DECT phones, so they can respond as quickly as possible to any drift or malfunction likely to alter or interrupt production!
A complex production environment under strict surveillance!
In the pharmaceutical industry, the Octapharma Lingolsheim facility must maintain a highly supervised production process, ensuring full compliance with stringent and constantly evolving pharmaceutical regulations. In fact, the manufacture of blood-derived medicinal products requires numerous production stages, such as fractionation, purification and aseptic distribution, in a controlled environment. A wide range of sensitive parameters must be continuously monitored 24/7 through the Building Management System (BMS). These include electricity supply, fire and intrusion detection, as well as critical production environment factors such as air purity, temperature, and air pressure in production workshops.
Looking to modernize its 963 supervision software, Octapharma Lingolsheim planned to upgrade its alarm monitoring, control tools, and infrastructure in early 2020. The aim of the project is to transmit alarms reliably and efficiently to maintenance teams, to provide better equipment availability and rapid response in the event of malfunctions. Alongside choosing a new supervision solution, Octapharma Lingolsheim swiftly opted to leverage the experience and expertise of Genersys, its air control partner, to design the architecture and interfaces required for centralizing and enhancing the reliability of alarm feedback. As Benjamin Tylinski, Head of Operational Automation at Octapharma Lingolsheim, explains, “Enhancing our production environment alarm management involved upgrading a significant amount of equipment. Having the support of a partner like Genersys, an expert in intelligent building management, was essential for establishing and executing a clear roadmap while actively onboarding employees in the process.”
Flawless production alarm processing!
Today, 80 Trend Control Systems PLCs, featuring ease of installation and transmission reliability, are ideally distributed over the two production and raw materials storage facilities. Built into electrical cabinets, these PLCs, using the BAC Net protocol on a TCP/IP network, for BMS, AHU (Air Handling Unit), White Rooms and Heat Pumps, are supervised and monitored by the IQvision solution. A new supervision architecture was implemented, giving priority to collecting alarms at source; ALERT and IQvision features were deployed on two different servers and networks. The 900 monthly alarms – covering everything from lighting status to temperature and humidity fluctuations – are reported to the ALERT software, which instantly notifies maintenance and on-call staff via their mobile devices.
The new, highly efficient and resilient supervision architecture allows Octapharma Lingolsheim to continuously monitor its processes and production environment, thereby swift action in response to any alerts. For instance, maintenance operators can also remotely manage cleanroom cooling and ventilation to prevent any drift of more than 1-2 degrees off the setpoint. Benjamin Tylinski, Head of Operational Automation at Octapharma Lingolsheim, adds: From solution interfacing to the technical roadmap, we were impressed by Genersys’ responsiveness and involvement.”
In 2023, Octapharma Lingolsheim is set to entrust Genersys with optimizing equipment supervision in a critical new environment: its newly installed data center at the rapidly expanding production site, set to be operational in the first quarter of 2023.