INDUSTRY: Life Sciences | SERVICES: Controls & Automation
ABOUT THE CLIENT
One of the world’s largest global pharmaceutical companies known for their leadership in pharmaceutical research, manufacturing, and the marketing of pharmaceutical products, reached out to EAD to support the upgrade of their controls systems infrastructure.
PROBLEM TO SOLVE
Our client’s existing operating control system was comprised of a legacy Rockwell Allen-Bradley PLC-5® and obsolete PanelView®. Because this existing system was so old, our client found it difficult to continue to support and maintain. The pharmaceutical manufacturer wanted to migrate to Rockwell’s ControlLogix® platform and use the latest version of Rockwell’s Studio 5000® and a newer version of FactoryTalk ME®. Our client’s existing operating control system was comprised of a legacy Rockwell Allen-Bradley PLC-5 and obsolete PanelView®. Because this existing system was so old, our client found it difficult to continue to support and maintain.
APPROACH & SOLUTION
EAD conducted a site visit with our client’s team early in the project to help clarify and finalize the new functionality that their system required. We worked with our client’s site operations and quality resources teams to develop system development lifecycle documents that identified the key elements of our client’s management of change documentation. In weekly meetings with our client, EAD delivered a detailed outline of our strategy for executing the control system migration and coordinating the work with the concurrent activities of our client’s other vendors during the extremely short plant shutdown window. After a complete analysis and review of our client’s systems, EAD migrated our client’s existing PLC functionality to a new processor. We incorporated new functionalities including additional WFI tank filling logic and conductivity inputs, improvements to the system alarming, and even operational enhancements that made it possible to lockout users if the system demand was at capacity.
RESULT & BENEFIT
EAD migrated the obsolete control system to the most recent version that the platform offered. We successfully migrated the existing code, added the new functionality, and provided the software testing protocol to qualify the new system. We then delivered the new equipment, software, and required GMP documentation per our client’s requirements on time and within budget. Our client now has a modern control system with additional functionality that helps their operations team work faster and perform better.