New SCADA Improves Productivity for Biomanufacturing Company

Project Scope:

• Tags: 5,801
• Screens: 22 Pages, 50 Views
• Clients: 5 HMI Thin Clients (3 more future scope this year, plus many more for the building expansion project next year), Perspective session via browsers in office
• Alarms: 390
• Devices used: 17 total; Rockwell, Siemens, Delta V; All communications via Kepware
• Architectures used: Redundant, on-site, standard with ability to publish to cloud gateway.
• Databases used: Microsoft SQL Server Cluster and OSI PI in Redundant configuration
• Historical data logged: 4,640 Tags logged in OSI PI Historian

Project Summary:

National Resilience Inc. offers a broad mix of customized manufacturing and development capabilities at their Mississauga, Ontario facility to serve the needs of biopharmaceutical companies at all stages of the drug development process – from pre-clinical development to commercial supply. Resilience requested Grantek’s assistance to develop an Ignition SCADA to support new GMP manufacturing processes in the building area known as the “H-Area.” This solution was needed to rapidly scale a brownfield contract pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, allowing Resilience to maximize their productivity and meet their commercialization goals.

Problem:

National Resilience Inc. offers a broad mix of customized manufacturing and development capabilities at their Mississauga, ON, facility to serve the needs of biopharmaceutical companies at all stages of the drug development process – from pre-clinical development to commercial supply. Resilience requested Grantek’s assistance to develop an Ignition SCADA to support new GMP manufacturing processes in the building area known as the “H-Area.” This solution was needed to rapidly scale a brownfield contract pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, allowing Resilience to maximize their productivity and meet their commercialization goals. With Resilience focused on broadening access to complex medicines, this solution needed to come online as soon as possible. This urgency was heightened as the COVID-19 pandemic and global military conflicts increased the threat to supply chains. Resilience’s clients rely on them to contract and manufacture important pharmaceuticals that help improve and maintain the health of patients across the globe. Ignition SCADA is a vital need to ensure operations function efficiently and these pharmaceuticals are manufactured successfully while maintaining compliance.

Solution: 

Grantek reviewed the UX development including the overall look and feel of the Ignition Perspective SCADA user interface with all stakeholders prior to beginning SCADA development. This review was part of the ongoing preliminary engineering engagement. Grantek also suggested milestone design reviews at the 30%, 60%, and 90% stages of the H-Area SCADA development. All functionalities were based on the approved Grantek Functional Specification (FS). 

Grantek believes a proper Ignition-centric deployment model should include both an immutable component (verified via digital signature) of the software installation and base-level configuration, as well as a version-controlled mutable component. National Resilience Inc. agreed with this belief and realized the benefit this would provide to their overall operations. To do this Grantek developed the Ignition SCADA application and a new PLC program for direct control of the water valves for the 5 POU stations in the Upstream, Downstream, and Formulation Areas. The new SCADA/PLC coordinates directly with the existing Water Manager PLC (PU70) for Water for Injections (WFI) request/authorization functionality. Grantek also updated the PU70 PLC program to include the new POUs in its water manager prioritization system. 

Grantek developed the Ignition SCADA application for direct connection to ethernet enabled OEM equipment and will account for the new SCADA platform will use Ignition across Development, Test, and Production environments, with the Test and Production environments implemented on redundant Ignition gateways. This allows for the solution to evolve in the future, as it could see the three environments be connected to an enterprise-wide cloud-based instance of Ignition. The new SCADA platform supports WiFi distribution as well as data acquisition and monitoring of OEM production equipment and instrumentation. This solution has hardwired connections via the new remote I/O panels for visualization and logging of process values and states. To do this, National Resilience Inc. provided a finalized list of tags per equipment category for integration into the SCADA system. Grantek provisioned a Git-backed version control system to track mutable changes and worked with National Resilience Inc. to define procedures for tracking and approving resource modifications.

Results:

The SCADA solution Grantek provided in the “H-Area” was able to utilize Ignition to not only deliver results, but also integrate with other aspects of the facility. By using a unified software solution like Ignition, National Resilience Inc. also has access to data that can be leveraged in future projects at their other North American facilities. The solution Grantek delivered included over 5,800 tags and 390 alarms. The solution also logged over 4,600 tags in OSI PI Historian. 17 total devices were used in this solution, including Rockwell Automation, Siemens and Delta V – with all communications done via Kepware. Ignition provides a single point of reference for all of their OEM production equipment, no matter the supplier. A redundant, on-site, standard Ignition architecture was utilized, with the ability to publish to cloud gateway. A Microsoft SQL Server Cluster database was selected, including OSI PI in Redundant configuration. While PI is the historian, Ignition is the reporting tool chosen to present that historical data.

Grantek’s solution is helping National Resilience Inc. quickly scale up their unique brownfield contract pharmaceutical manufacturing facility. The result will see National Resilience Inc. produce pharmaceuticals and vaccines available to patients all over the world, especially important as the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain issues continue to hamper the timely access to needed medications.

Transcription:

00:09
Doug: I'm Doug Yerger, a Principal Engineer with Grantek. Grantek is a systems integrator and a business solution partner with over 40 years of experience in the life sciences, CPG, and food and beverage industries. We are a Premier and Enterprise Ignition Integrator with over 10 years of Ignition experience.

00:30
Doug: We did this project for National Resilience, Inc. Resilience is a technology-focused biomanufacturing company dedicated to broadening access to complex medicines. Founded in 2020, the company is building a sustainable network of high-tech end-to-end manufacturing solutions to ensure that treatments can be made quickly, safely, and at scale. Resilience offers a broad mix of customized manufacturing and development capabilities at its facility in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Resilience serves the needs of the biopharmaceutical companies at all stages of the drug development process from pre-clinical development to commercial supply.

01:10
Doug: Grantek helped Resilience develop an Ignition SCADA system to support new GMP manufacturing processes in the building known as the “H-Area.” This solution was needed to rapidly scale a brownfield contract pharmaceutical manufacturing facility allowing Resilience to maximize its productivity and meet its commercialization goals. This SCADA filled the gaps in the new area's automation systems by providing the Water for Injection prioritizing, point-of-use valve control, OEM equipment status monitoring, various environmental and process input monitoring and alarming, alarm statistics, trending of OSI PI data, and reporting.

01:49
Doug: The design tool Figma was used to concept the screens and review with the customer. This is the overview for the Water for Injection system. The upper portion of the page shows the status of the two WFI loops, including their current prioritized queue requests. This page provides the operator and support personnel with key information around the systems so they can more quickly diagnose any issues. On the bottom of the page are point-of-use controls for the point-of-use valves themselves. And in the lower-right corner is a small area that actually is the control for each of the valves. This is a pop-up that is controlled by selecting which area you wish to see.

02:32
Doug: In addition to the overview, the detail of the status of each of the water systems is also available. This provides additional insight into the external water systems, which are not local to the new systems in the H-Area. This is an example of an OEM status screen. Resilience and Grantek work with the OEMs to determine available connectivity methods and available tags. Resilience then combs through those lists to determine which tags they wish to see displayed. This still left a very large number of tags for most pieces of equipment. These tags were then divided into logical groupings, which are displayed as tabs on this page. This page is fully dynamic with all the tabs and tag lists generating automatically from the tag browser.

03:16
Doug: If a tag is added to the directory for a piece of equipment, it will automatically show up on the screen. In addition, the user can pin commonly used tags, which will appear at the top of the page. The lower section is also collapsible to allow for a larger viewing area for the pinned tags at the top. The miscellaneous environmental and process inputs and outputs are displayed by sub-area in the process. This page uses a similar design to the OEM page to provide a better user experience. Once again, this is a fully dynamic page based on the user tag screen. Once again, this is a fully dynamic page based on the tag tree structure. One key addition on this page is the collapsed alarm banner at the bottom of the page. And here is an example showing the alarm banner expanded. P&ID pages are available as well for more detailed troubleshooting.

04:07
Doug: The system includes reporting shown as the alarm report. On the left is the filtering system for the reports allowing you to set start and end date and filter by equipment or alarm name as well as priority and state. The report will update when you click the "Generate Report" button in the lower left. In addition, we have an alarm statistics screen. On this screen, we show the number of alarms occurring over the course of the time period, in addition, the top 10 highest occurrences during that time period as well, showing both the alarm itself, as well as a Pareto showing the ranking of that alarm.

04:46
Doug: A final important feature of this project is the audit trail. We've enhanced the standard audit trail to include previous value, reason, and electronic validation signature when required for audit roll actions. Our workflow for this project made use of the Figma design tool. This facilitated conversations around themes, styles, and user experiences without diving into the development environment. This greatly shortened the design process. I personally think Figma is a great design tool. Resilience's commitment to Ignition is highlighted by this project being expanded for a new greenfield facility, including full control for the WFI and EMS systems. In addition, Resilience is using this project as a basis for a global cloud-based solution.