Pharma 4.0® Conference

“The future belongs to whoever sees it first. Let’s start looking.” – Jason Clarke

On the 16th April 2018, PharmOut and ARCS Australia co-hosted Australia’s first Pharma 4.0® conference in Melbourne, Australia.  In this forum we explored the concepts, technology and benefits of Pharma 4.0®, generating conversation and engaging representatives from across all industry sectors to discuss this hot topic.

Industry 4.0, otherwise known as the 4th industrial revolution, has generated solutions that have had a major impact on industries such as transportation, logistics, and aviation. With such an exciting range of technologies available that can be applied in new and innovative ways, it is well worth seeing which ideas can be pulled out applied in the scope of pharmaceutical and medicinal manufacturing as a part of ‘Pharma 4.0®‘.

The concepts behind Pharma 4.0® can often be overwhelming, however, it is becoming increasingly relevant as we proceed into the future. If, as industry professionals, we all jump in early and tackle the topic together we will better understand what technology is available, which technologies are appropriate and how to incorporate the technology in both a compliant and ethical way.

The important message to take away is that you don’t have to make massive changes in order to start the Pharma 4.0 journey – companies can start and should start small when trying to implement digitalisation and it’s important to have a clear idea of the primary areas and assets you want to tackle and the results you want to see. For example, a good place to start is to introduce paperless initiatives or an electronic document management system,  or, if you have critical equipment which requires a lot of maintenance it would be good to track the metrics of the run time vs breakdown so you can predict in advance when maintenance will be required and reduce any periods of costly downtime.

As part of our annual Validation, Engineering and GMP Forum to be held on the 6 and 7th August in Melbourne, Australia, we will again include some Industry 4.0 concepts. We would like to invite international and Australian presenters to share their ideas and experiences relating to Pharma 4.0® and look forward to seeing you there!