eschbach has launched a new batch tracking solution for its Shiftconnector enterprise manufacturing platform, designed for seamless collaboration between production, QA, and QC teams for a more streamlined batch release process.
eschbach
The new solution automatically integrates data from key systems such as the MES, LIMS, ERP, and QMS, offering plant stakeholders a shared, real-time view on the status of individual batches via role-based visual dashboards. Estimates from shopfloor digitalisation experts show that this can reduce manual data entry effort per operator by as much as 75%, from 2 hours per day down to 30 mins. This simultaneously reduces the risk of failure and fosters faster market availability.
For instance, should a batch run into an issue during production, this information will be seamlessly relayed to QC, with details on the length of the delay and new estimated time that the samples will arrive for testing, allowing schedules to be adjusted accordingly.
A drill-down menu with contextualised data offers further details on the nature of the issue, while built-in collaboration boards facilitate real time, cross-departmental communication to resolve challenges before they escalate into serious delays. Crucially, the system is fully GxP compliant and arrives GAMP 5 validation-ready, supporting audit trials and digital signatures.
With the ability to generate charts and heat maps on historic batch performance, pinch points in production can quickly be identified and addressed, while golden batch profiles can be easily identified to help feed continuous improvement initiatives.
Andreas Eschbach, Founder and CEO of eschbach, said: “One of the leading causes of batch release delays is a lack of visibility across teams, leading manufacturing teams to be misaligned in their priorities, while negatively affecting planning around critical processes like testing.
“By contrast, a shared view on batch status enables all teams, regardless of where they may sit in the production cycle, to accurately track a batch’s position from one end of the process to another. This allows any delays that may have knock-on effects to be anticipated and planned around, closing the gap between production, QA, and QC, and cutting daily release management routine tasks from hours to minutes, delivering measurable efficiency improvements.”
These challenges detailed by Andreas are explored in eschbach’s latest whitepaper, Accelerating Batch Release with Digital Solutions, which helps map out the root causes of bottlenecks and how digital batch tracking can help solve them.
The new batch tracking function fully integrates with the Shiftconnector Artificial Manufacturing Intelligence (SAMI) suite, allowing plant stakeholders to leverage the power of AI for further batch insight.
For instance, operators can ask SAMI Chat, a conversational interface based on plant data, “which batches are currently in process and what’s their status?” SAMI Chat will then respond in natural language, providing an itemised list of batches with details on the batch, its current status, planned start and end, alongside other critical information.
Taking this one step further, users can ask SAMI Chat a range of other more complex queries, such as the nature of a delay, and then ask the AI to aggregate this data into a table or report for the operator.
eschbach is also developing widgets for its batch tracking dashboards, which will provide AI-powered contextualised insights into delays at a glance.
Eschbach concluded: “Ensuring total visibility of batch status across teams is essential to increasing alignment between individual manufacturing departments. While this is only one piece of a larger puzzle, ensuring all teams are pulling in the same direction is critical to shortening release times and, in turn reducing time to patient for vital medicines.”