Advancing a sustainable pharmaceutical manufacturing strategy

According to a report by Accenture and Dassault Systèmes, the pharmaceutical industry’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are increasing despite efforts to decarbonize. Analyses of emissions per million dollars of revenue find that the global pharmaceutical industry is approximately 55 percent more emissions-intensive than the automotive industry. This figure is only set to grow in tandem with the rising global demand for therapies.

Today, only 50 percent of the global population has access to essential healthcare, halfway to the United Nations’ goal of achieving 100 percent of universal coverage by 2040. Until then, the number of cancer and neurological degenerative diseases is expected to increase with global demographic growth.

“These complex multifactorial diseases are not easy to treat or cure, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have adapted to this challenge by developing sophisticated therapies,” said Claire BIOT, Vice President of Life Sciences and Healthcare at Dassault Systèmes.

As pharmaceutical manufacturing lines transition towards small batch production to produce these precision medicines, manufacturers need to effect end-to-end manufacturing line optimizations to produce these therapies more sustainably.

However, many pharmaceutical companies have to consider the global scale of such an endeavor. Recent merger and acquisition activity in the pharmaceutical industry has resulted in companies acquiring a much larger global manufacturing footprint, requiring them to solve increasing complexity in their supply chains. These disparate systems, managing highly technical and scientific data do not communicate with each other, obstructing the acceleration of novel therapies.

Instead, sustainability needs to be factored into pharmaceutical manufacturing from the start. “It’s in the early phases of the design that you factor in the environmental, social and business sustainability requirements to be able to optimize them,” said Arnaud CASTÉRAN, a Senior Offer Marketing Manager at CATIA. To do so, pharmaceutical manufacturers need to transition to digitalized manufacturing to manufacture more sustainably.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers need to adopt a new paradigm to optimize their complex industrial plants, processes and products. They need to digitalize their manufacturing because it is the only way to enable diverse stakeholders to come together and systematically determine, among many considerations:

• Whether to construct new facilities or optimize existing ones
• Where therapies should be produced
• If it’s possible to increase resource efficiency and effect process improvements to lower costs
• How to link patients to the product, process and factory

“All of these considerations can be factored into digitalized manufacturing with a process-based design so that pharmaceutical companies can produce what they expect from the start. The right science-based tools work seamlessly with digitalized manufacturing lines to enable the iterative loop that ensures pharmaceutical manufacturing can continue to manufacture sustainably from the first phase,” added Arnaud.

This strategy enables pharmaceutical manufacturers to positively impact:

• Society, by balancing access, cost and quality needs to ensure equitable access to healthcare and medicine for all, across global markets. These considerations are proactive and include ensuring the functionality and integrity of therapeutic products and serialization across the production line.
• The environment, by realizing clean operations and energy-efficient supply chains because manufacturers can quickly source sustainable raw materials, reduce waste and GHG emissions during production, and integrate more closely with the circular economy.
• Business, by enabling pharmaceutical companies to confidently demonstrate global manufacturing compliance and integrity in a transparent and cost effective way that engenders trust and sustainable revenue generation.

Digital manufacturing is realized with a virtual twin, a digital replica of real-world pharmaceutical processes, products and plants from end-to-end. It delivers the agility manufacturers need with science-based tools that can be leveraged to develop novel therapies.

These tools adhere to scientific principles across biology, chemistry, physics and engineering, making them a crucial enabler in a science-based domain like pharmaceuticals. Then, the right platform unites diverse stakeholders, including designers, engineers, supply chain vendors, scientists, and others, with scientific data to accelerate decision-making, process intelligence and analysis. As a result, pharmaceutical manufacturers can experience unparalleled transparency levels to communicate regulatory compliance and build trust with regulators and patients.

The combination of the virtual twin and the power of the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform has a decades-long transformative effect in the manufacturing phase of many highly demanding technical industries like aerospace, high-tech and transportation. It’s now time for pharmaceutical companies to leverage best-in-class scientific tools to revolutionize their manufacturing lines and deliver innovative therapies while ensuring environmental, social and business sustainability.