Shire selects Honeywell technologies for new biotech facility

Lexington, Massachusetts - Shire HGT, a business unit of Shire, will use a number of Honeywell control technolgies on manufacturing processes at its new $250m  production facility in Lexington, Massachusetts. The facility is scheduled for completion in spring 2010 and will be the largest disposable biotechnology site in the US and will include cell-culture production, a clinical suite and just-in-time warehousing.

The facility will use the Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS) as the primary control platform, which will be supported by Experion Batch Manager, the OneWireless industrial wireless network and the Uniformance Process Historian Database (PHD).

The processing capacity of the Experion C300 controller is intended to reduce the amount of hardware needed to automate Shire’s manufacturing process, as well as reducing operating costs. Experion Batch Manager further simplifies operations by allowing manufacturers to quickly execute complex batch recipes reliably in a regulated environment.  Uniformance PHD technology will pull information from the controller to help improve operations by allowing Shire operators to quickly store, retrieve and analyse process control data.

Additionally, the OneWireless mesh network technology will allow Shire to mount controllers on moveable equipment without having to worry about cabling issues, which is intended to help increase its production flexibility, safety and efficiency. Wireless remote operator stations will be used to help reduce the overall number of stations required and eliminate the need for expensive hardened enclosures in environmentally sensitive areas.