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Pharma manufacturers are increasingly investing on digital tools for engineering to achieve operational excellence. This is because operational excellence is imperative to achieve quality, productivity, and profitability in this competitive environment for Indian pharma, said Ramadoss Magesh, managing director, APAC operations, INOSIM Solutions.
Currently, pharma plants manage their operations through excel sheets. This becomes difficult to manage as the complexity of the process increases. India holds an important position in the global pharmaceutical sector with around 11,000 manufacturing units and a number of capacity expansion projects in this strong growth-oriented industry space, he added.
Further, there is reluctance to adopting digital tools for engineering in many pharma companies. This is because relatively low R&D expenditure in contrast to other industry verticals to address manufacturing and production challenges. Disruption in the supply chain and dynamic market demand to pharma products are some of the consequences that warranted a closer look to technology such as ours during pandemic. To this end, INOSIM provides enabling tools and technologies to address key engineering challenges associated with development, design, and operation of batch processes in pharma industry, Magesh told Pharmabiz.
Over the last two decades, INOSIM has established a strong presence in Europe. Its India operations commenced in mid 2022. We cater to pharma multinational companies having operations in India/APAC regions. There is a strong interest to adopt this globally proven technology among the pharma at their India operations. We also have active on-going engagements with top Indian pharma companies and are looking forward to on-board them as customers soon, he said.
The company has a multi-pronged strategy to target projects in India. It would focus on expanding global adoption of its tools in India with existing customers having operations here to replicate their global success locally. Then the company is also working to approach domestic pharma manufacturers involved in capacity expansion. Special product packages and licensing models would be there to address the needs of pharma small and medium sized companies. “The company is looking to position its new solution INOSIM Foresight, that operates with real-time plant data for predictive decision support in batch production. Besides, the company is also keen to consider collaboration for research projects and curriculum integration of its tools with academic institutions,” he said.
The key strength of the company is to provide a holistic plant view that helps to understand process interdependencies instead of focusing on single unit operation. It also addresses capacity analysis, production de-bottlenecking, planning, and scheduling. It also identifies cost-intensive areas of production and develop strategies to make it cost-efficient. It accelerates a product’s time-to-market by quickly determining the modifications required to scale-up with size equipment, estimate utility and labor requirements, etc. In pharma production, the INOSIM process simulation software improves process development by giving insight into the process dynamics prior to making real-world changes, ultimately lowering costs over the complete course of development and production. There is visible interest for Indian pharma to invest ever more on digital tools for engineering to achieve operational excellence, said Magesh.
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