Industry 4.0 technology is having a major impact on how pharmaceutical manufacturers manage their facilities. New changes, powered by Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices like internet-connected tools and sensors have enabled the remote control of machines and real-time facility monitoring.
While still experimental, industrial IoT fleets have already had a significant influence on the pharmaceutical industry. These are some of the most popular current applications of the tech and where the industry is likely to go in the next few years.
1. Warehousing and Supply Chain Management
With a fleet of industrial IoT sensors, you can track vast amounts of information in real-time. One of the most powerful applications of this approach is in warehousing and supply chain management.
Using the right combination of IIoT devices, a pharmaceutical company can use the IoT for asset tracing keeping track of pharmaceuticals both in the supply chain and as they move around individual facilities, like a warehouse.
Sensors are also useful for maintaining shipping conditions especially for pharmaceuticals that need to be transported using a cold chain that requires medicine to be transported at precise temperatures.
One prominent example of this tech in practice was used in the management of the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain in 2020 and 2021.
Using a combination of predictive algorithms and IoT sensors, Youteligent, an Israel-based software company, developed a platform that predicts when vaccines will be exposed to temperatures that could cause them to thaw and expire.
The specific application relied on a fleet of energy consumption sensors that could be installed in new devices or retrofitted in old ones. These sensors tracked how much energy a particular machine like a refrigerator was using. When the energy consumption of one of these machines dips suddenly, it‘s typically a signal that something has gone wrong the machine has been unplugged, or is damaged, or is behaving improperly and not drawing enough power.
Sensors provide immediate notice of this kind of failure. This helps ensure technicians on-site can either repair the machine or transport the vaccines to another refrigerator, preventing them from thawing prematurely and expiring.
Similar tech will likely be useful well into the future as a way of creating a more reliable cold chain and providing better information to logistics experts. For example, analysis of aggregated data on electrical consumption could help find more energy-efficient ways to transport medicine in the cold chain.
2. Predictive Maintenance and Live Equipment Monitoring
Predictive maintenance is one of the most common applications of IIoT technology. With this maintenance approach, a facility manager begins by installing new IoT sensors on an existing piece of equipment or installs a new machine with sensors pre-equipped.
These sensors track various types of information related to machine performance in real-time like vibration, timing, temperature, or even the sounds the machine makes. This information gets fed into a central platform that aggregates and analyzes this data.
After a baseline for machine performance gets established, the platform uses that data to identify safe operating thresholds. When a machine passes out of one of those thresholds, the system will instantly alert facility managers or, depending on the system, automatically shut down the machine.
This approach can reduce the need for maintenance checks while still ensuring that factory equipment is monitored and repaired as needed.
In practice, predictive maintenance strategies have been used to help pharmaceutical facilities cut down on maintenance costs and reduce the risk of unexpected breakdowns and downtime.
Data on machine failure can help facilities in other ways, too like by potentially making pharmaceutical recalls less costly to trace.
For example, most pharmaceutical manufacturers use some kind of process cooling for batch processing, research, and to cool medicine, reagents, or water to precise temperatures. When a process cooler fails, it may stop cooling to the correct temperature possibly disrupting the manufacturing process or creating faulty batches of new drugs.
An IoT sensor in the right place can keep track of process cooler temperatures and immediately alert site technicians when a machine begins to fail. Stored information on temperature would also be useful in identifying batches of pharmaceuticals that may be faulty or contaminated due to machine failure. This can help manufacturers stage more precise recalls and reduce waste.
3. Facility Monitoring
IoT devices can also provide managers with a real-time view of facility processes. IoT devices distributed around a facility can keep track of an extensive variety of data. Sensors on pallets and equipment can follow the movement of goods around a facility, offering insights into facility traffic flow and potential bottlenecks.
Equipment sensors, in addition to updates on machine performance, also provide insights into factory processes like the average speed of production flows. Some machines may also be remotely controlled with the right IoT technology, enabling workers to operate them without being on-site, or technicians to quickly inspect the machines without driving out to a facility.
In the event of an accident, facility monitoring technology can also provide valuable records that may help investigators pinpoint accident causes and estimate how much damage was done.
4. Digital Pills and Smart Medicine
IoT technology is also starting to change the medicine that pharmaceutical manufacturers create.
In 2017, the FDA approved the first digital pill . It was a new version of the antipsychotic aripiprazole with an ingestible sensor included in each tablet. When dropped into water or any polar molecule the sensor inside the tablet generates enough power to activate its silicon chip, which then sends a signal to a wearable device that the pill has been ingested.
The wearable patch can then send this information to a doctor along with other data, like the patient’s activity level or whether the pill was taken lying down. The data can also be used by a patient to help them keep track of whether or not they’ve taken their medication.
In the future, more complex applications of this technology could become possible, enabling better tracking for patients who struggle with treatment compliance like patients with dementia or similar disorders.
IoT Sensors May Reshape Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
Internet of Things devices will continue to have a significant influence on how manufacturers operate. With new technology, it’s possible to more effectively manage machine maintenance or review facility workflows.
In the future, this tech is likely to become even more important to the industry. Cold chain monitoring, predictive maintenance platforms, and even smart pills may be essential considerations for manufacturers wishing to optimize efficiency and deliver the highest-quality products possible.