ABB India bags order to automate Reliance Life Science's biopharmaceutical facilities

Technology provider ABB India Limited bagged an order from Reliance Life Sciences (RLS) to automate control solutions for their new biosimilars and plasma proteins manufacturing facilities in its 160-acre plant at Nashik, Maharashtra, the company announced on Monday.

"The scope encompasses complete automation of the manufacturing process using ABB’s flagship Distributed Control System (DCS) Ability System 800xA, Remote I/O systems, Batch Recipe Management, and MES Integration," the company said in a release.

The System 800xA, which will be installed in a virtualized environment, interfaces seamlessly with various skid systems and is used extensively for seamless operator interaction, batch control, and production information on the factory floor, it added.

With automating the said solution, RLS will be able to attain operational excellence, reduce time to market, and ensure strict quality control of their manufacturing processes.

Apart from this, the deployment of ABB's DCS will enable Reliance to cut on the total cost of ownership. Delivering DCS on the latest Windows Server 2022 platform, will help Reliance to avoid any plant shutdowns for software upgrades, ultimately reducing overall costs associated with downtime, software or hardware updates, and related services.

The said solution also provides an integration platform that will help the company in monitoring different plant sections and streamlining maintenance.

The company in an exchange filing said that the DCS would be supplied in compliance with US FDA 21 CFR Part 11, as installation is for a pharmaceutical manufacturing unit. This is to meet the required standards.

To enable faster commissioning and process implementation with the ability to scale the capacity of the plant in the future, ABB will also bring in the modular remote I/O solution which is more flexible and brings a plug-and-play concept to automation.