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Laying the Digital Foundation for Growth
Valent BioSciences Transforms Manual Record-Keeping Into Data-Driven Operational Efficiency With Ecolab CLEEN
Achtergrond
Laying the Digital Foundation for Growth
Valent BioSciences is a global leader in the development and commercialization of innovative biorational technologies that help improve agricultural productivity and protect public health and environmental sustainability. As part of the company's innovation roadmap, Valent BioSciences identified the need to digitize record-keeping and reporting to achieve increased visibility and enable the ability to drive quality, efficiency and performance across its operations. "As you're growing, it gets very cumbersome to manage paper records," explains Tomas Vazquez, Digital Innovation Coordinator at Valent BioSciences. "Digitizing records lets you use analytics to correct issues and capture opportunities sooner, so you can accelerate your growth."
Resolving the pain points of manual, paper-based record-keepingCase in point: At one of Valent BioSciences main production facilities in Osage, Iowa, paper batch records presented growing challenges. Much like baking an industrial-sized cake, Valent BioSciences production processes involve detailed steps and measurements. Plant staff were manually recording many numbers and confirming precise amounts of ingredients, validating each step through paper records. Beyond the time-consuming manual validation and record-keeping itself, the plant increasingly recognized issues in how they were able to (or unable to) use those paper records. Reviewing and approving paper batch records took hours. Reporting, investigating issues or conducting root-cause analyses were all slow, manual workflows.
"Our immediate goals were to reduce the amount of time spent on paper documentation and eliminate paperwork errors," says Richard Gordon, Digital Transformation Lead at Valent BioSciences. Plant leaders also wanted to use digitization to build quality into core workflows (rather than post-hoc), and to move toward data-driven issue prioritization. "Ultimately, we want to exploit our capacity," says Gordon. "We have a lot of demand, so how can we use digital insights to get as much as we can out of the plant?"
Oplossing
Ecolab CLEEN Platform Outshines Competing Vendor
Valent BioSciences had begun working with another vendor to implement a platform to digitize batch records, but had concerns around the platform capabilities and flexibility.
At the same time, Valent BioSciences began working with Ecolab to digitize processes within the Osage plant's quality control (QC) lab, where staff often spent two hours a day just printing paper records. The experience with the Ecolab CLEEN platform in the QC lab sharply contrasted their experience with the other platform and vendor. "The user experience immediately stood out - it was very good," says Vazquez.
Moreover, Ecolab's responsiveness made a huge difference. Ecolab has provided chemistry solutions to Valent BioSciencesfor nearly a decade, and the same trusted partnership came through in Valent BioSciences experience with the CLEEN platform. "They were so open to capturing our requirements and tailoring the solution. We thought, 'Wow, they made progress on that so fast," and we saw an opportunity to help with our EBR [electronic batch records] initiative" says Vazquez.
Ecolab Partnership Accelerates Implementation
As Valent BioSciences shifted its EBR digitization to Ecolab, scoping the configuration of 52 production processes, that same responsive collaboration drove a successful implementation. "On the project management side, they had dedicated resources and we had regular meetings so we were all aware of what's coming. The communication was very clear," says Vazquez. "The CLEEN team was highly responsive to user feedback and opportunities for further customization were corrected quickly," echoes Gordon, "I know if we said we wanted to put an elephant in the platform, the Ecolab team would figure out a way to make it happen for us."
For example, in integrating CLEEN with the Valent BioSciences facility's plant intelligence (PI) system, "There was collaborative work between Valent BioSciences IT and the Ecolab CLEEN team," says Vazquez. "The CLEEN team was willing to have as many meetings as needed to provide clarity to IT."
Beyond accelerating issue resolution, Vazquez says this collaborative on-site partnership helped to gain buy-in and adoption from Valent BioSciences plant staff: "The Ecolab team was deeply involved in this implementation. That's why we've gotten to this point so fast - and it's why we all feel comfortable both with UX and with the vendor."
Batch Manufacturing Records:
52
Completed Batches:
388
Data Entry Reduced by:
60%
Labor Reduced by:
582 hrs
*Door de klant geleverde gegevens
Resultaten
Rapidly Modernizing Core Plant Workflows
In short order, Valent BioSciences has made huge strides in digitization with the Ecolab CLEEN platform. "So far, we've configured all of our processes in CLEEN and we've already shifted 30 of them to fully paperless," says Vazquez. Gordon explains that CLEEN has also profoundly changed the experience of working on the production floor and managing plant performance:
- In-line digital documentation: “We now have full wi-fi capability with tablets that are running CLEEN, so staff can record information in real time as they complete steps.”
- Quality/compliance controls: “We’re able to build sequential steps and controls right into the digital workflows.”
- Real-time visibility, alerts and root-cause analysis: “That data is available instantly for review, analytics, auditing — and we can quickly dig in to identify problems and solve them at the root cause.”
- Data-driven prioritization: “As issues pop up, we can understand what’s happening most frequently and which issue is causing the most downtime.”
- Process improvement: “CLEEN also gives us a central place to improve and update procedures and ensure that those changes are implemented and sustained.”
Integrating Plant Intelligence for Broader Monitoring and Alerting
With its EBRs and core processes digitized, the Valent BioSciences plant is now working on expanding its CLEEN use cases by bringing in more plant data. As mentioned, the plant is integrating CLEEN with its PI system, bringing in the full range of automatic sensor data from plant equipment. "This will enable us to improve overall equipment effectiveness," says Vazquez. Gordon says the plant is also building out CLEEN's robust alerting capabilities: "We'll be using CLEEN alerts to focus our attention on where we can improve."
Building Business Intelligence on Top of Operational Efficiency
As expected, the most immediate impacts of digitization with the CLEEN platform center on time-saving efficiencies: "Instead of spending 20 minutes a day printing records, our people have digitally enabled processes that are so much faster and smoother," says Vazquez. "People aren't wasting time trying to track down a binder in the plant," says Gordon, "Now it's always accessible, right when you need it."
But it's the speed and depth of visibility offered by CLEEN that will deliver bigger-picture benefits for the plant. "We're building out a digital status board that will display all of the different batches in progress," says Gordon. "It will give operators real-time updates on what's going on and what next steps are - and it will give insights on what's going well and what's not going well."
Buoyed by the success of the CLEEN implementation, the plant is now working on building out a full-scale manufacturing execution system, or MES. The MES will digitize everything from production scheduling and downtime tracking to quality checks and compli-ance audits - all with an aim to eliminate inefficiency of manual record-keeping, build quality into digital workflows, and enable re-al-time reporting and investigation through digital records. "CLEEN will be a key element of our MES," explains Gordon. "The goal is to make CLEEN the only interface for our frontline operators on the floor. We have other tools, but CLEEN is the main thing I want operators looking at - the UX is that good."
CLEEN van Ecolab
Een digitaal platform dat is gebouwd om de manier waar organisaties in life sciences bedrijfskritische praktijken beheren te transformeren - van validatie tot het beschermen van gegevensintegriteit en het stimuleren van operationele uitmuntendheid.
"Instead of spending 20 minutes a day printing records, our people have digitally enabled processes that are so much faster and smoother. People aren't wasting time trying to track down a binder in the plant. Now it's always accessible, right when you need it."
— Richard Gordon, Digital Transformation Lead, and Tomas Vazquez, Digital Innovation Coordinator at Valent BioSciences