October 2019, Optimal Industrial Technologies, Bristol, England. Eli Lilly and Company, a longstanding partner of Optimal Industrial Technologies has won the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE)’s 2019 Facility of the Year Award (FOYA) for Process Innovation.

The accolade was recently presented in Las Vegas. The global healthcare leader was selected for its cutting-edge Continuous Drug Substance Manufacturing facility in Kinsale, Ireland which relies on synTQ software from Optimal.

ISPE’s FOYA committee recognised Eli Lilly’s Kinsale pharmaceutical plant as a clear example of what the future of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production will look like, according to ISPE’s report.1 The company was able to deliver a significant improvement in impurity control, process safety and environmental impacts by setting up a fully automated, continuous manufacturing facility. This applies a data-driven approach to process control and quality management.

The implementation of Process Analytical Technology (PAT) played a crucial role in the development of Eli Lilly’s intelligent ‘factory of the future’. This framework forms part of an FDA approved methodology allowing manufacturers to conduct quality testing without halting production, such as online HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography).1 This empowers businesses to collect data that helps predict finished product attributes and how critical process parameters will affect them. As a result, it is possible to modify operating conditions during live plant operations to build quality into end products, optimising efficiency, productivity and raw material usage.

Optimal has worked closely with Eli Lilly to support the installation of synTQ, a PAT knowledge management platform that acts as a process orchestrator.1 This captures analytical and process measurements, hosts and executes multivariate quality prediction models in real-time and provides live feedback to process control equipment. Using a predictive model that can be adapted to find incremental process improvements over time also allows for continuous improvement in plant efficiency.

Martin Gadsby, Director at Optimal Industrial Technologies, comments: “We would like to congratulate Eli Lilly on the ISPE award. Our customer’s success with this project is particularly pleasing for us, as it attests to the range of benefits that synTQ can deliver in the pharmaceutical and life-science sectors. We are proud to see our solution being recognised as a key enabler to Smart Manufacturing. Our market-leading software is currently used by over half of the top ten global pharmaceutical manufacturing companies however we don’t often have the opportunity to publicise our involvement. This occasion is a welcome exception, and we look forward to helping more customers to deliver continuous process solutions.”

1 ISPE. 2019. 2019 Category Winner for Process Innovation. [ONLINE] Available at: https://ispe.org/facility-year-awards/winners/2019/process-innovation [Accessed 30 October 2019].