Sustainability In Manufacturing: Power And Digital Twins
By Louis Garguilo, Chief Editor, Outsourced Pharma
Heather Walters spends her time as a professional thinking about effective business and industrial sustainability and resource conservation.
Meanwhile, I’ve maintained a position near the bottom of the list of interested parties.
That made for great conversation.
For example, when I bring up the divergent political opinions surrounding sustainability, the environment, and climate change, Walters replies that any focus on sustainability “as a political statement or movement is challenging to me, because when I think about this, I think about the traditional triangle of sustainability.”
The second part of the triangle is a pleasant surprise: profit.
“You must gain a clear return on that investment,” she says. Now we’re talking business.
Completing her triangle is a measured – and certainly legitimate – concern for the planet.
“Being resource efficient,” says Walters, “is inherent in the work I do for our pharmaceutical-industry clients at CRB.” (CRB is a global provider of sustainable engineering, architecture, construction and consulting solutions to pharma and other industries.)
“The pharma industry makes products to make people's lives better. We must do it in both a financially, and resource-efficient way. I try to bring discussions back to that triangle – people, profits, and planet,” she says
“That economic case is essential for us to be resource efficient and positive for the communities we live in and serve.”
An Electric Shock
Walters also identifies three intersecting themes that will shape pharmaceutical facilities over the next five to 10 years: digital infrastructure; automation and robotics; and electrification, which supports the first two.”
The challenge, she says, is to consider all three simultaneously because they share a common core: each has the potential to increase electrical loads in a facility and on individual projects.
Demand from AI and data centers is putting pressure on the electric grid, affecting utility interconnection timelines and the availability of equipment such as transformers, generators, and substations.
Walters explains that "interconnect and equipment lead times that were months can now take two, three or more years," depending on where you are in the U.S. (or world).
That timeline to secure more electricity becomes the critical path for many sustainability-focused facility projects.
When digital infrastructure, automation/robotics, and electrification come at the same time, “it’s a challenge that needs to be clearly thought out,” Walters says. “Unfortunately, these are mostly discussed separately and not in the aggregate.”
This is the sustainability question not adequately addressed in our industry:
“What is transpiring outside our facilities that impacts our ability to build or upgrade to climate-friendly operations largely electrified and digitized, regulatory compliant and matching Pharma 4.0 strategies?”
The Promise Of Digital Twins
Regarding digital infrastructure specifically, “the gold standard today is digital twinning.”
The goal is to build digital twins affording visibility into such things as performance metrics in operations supporting operational resilience and predictive maintenance.
The challenge? Generating enough data to feed that digital twin and extract insights.
“You can't run a digital twin on a plant that isn't talking to you,” says Walters. “Frankly, most of our facilities or lines still aren't saying a lot to us.”
“If you want to move into that digital universe, focus on data, metering, collecting information directly from manufacturing facilities. That's the digital infrastructure piece I think about.”
At the basic level, meters help us understand flows of energy, water, compressed air, and solvents. Moving forward, facilities will leverage technologies to observe production and movement, predict how operations interact with each other, inform operators when something is amiss, and suggest courses of action.
Walters offers an example:
A robust digital twin (with the requisite data) helps operators distinguish between normal variation and emerging problems. It may identify where regular fluctuations are within an expected range, which does not require action. But when operating conditions move outside that range, the digital twin can identify the anomaly early and alert the team before it impacts reliability, product quality, or resource consumption. The digital twin now becomes a powerful predictive maintenance tool.
Digital twins will someday inform us that when A, B and C sensors have certain readings, respectively, they have collectively contributed to adverse outcomes in similar production areas.
Today, those three sensors appear unrelated and minor. The AI-enabled digital twin of the future points out a cascade of unwanted happenings.
Saving those batches, maximizing materials, maintaining equipment, operating at the highest levels of efficiency, these are the components of profitability and sustainability in our facilities.
“The digital twin gives you the ability to pull together disparate pieces, both inside and outside of your strict production environment,” says Walters.
Begin applying AI logic to look for patterns professionals are not seeing today, Walters says, and the full power of digital twinning will be realized.
Start With The Basics
Back to the present, while some organizations including CDMOs are attaining higher levels of sustainability – Piramal Pharma Solutions comes to my mind – even simple meters, monitors, and sensors can help manufacturers better understand what’s happening within faciliites.
“Our goal is to prevent an alarm from going off,” Walters says. Yet, some facilities have not even employed the basic monitoring we'd expect as we head into 2027.
“We just did a water study for a CDMO,” Walters says. “They had one incoming water meter for their entire facility. They did have ways to understand some specific production pieces, but they weren't metering inside."
"We had to look at P&IDs [Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams] and make engineering and process informed assumptions to guesstimate how water flowed through their system.”
The initial recommendation was simple: Add sensors and monitor them.
And Walters is right: Sustainability can't become political. It’s another practical component to improve profitability and reliability – and our lives.
Now, about the challenge of securing all that needed electricity, the biopharma industry needs to think collectively, and we might start here:
Why Is Biopharma Left Out Of The U.S. Infrastructure Conversation?