Augury Pharma Customer Proof Sept 22.pdf

How Augury Helps Pharma Companies

Pharmaceutical companies bear the responsibility of extending and saving lives by manufacturing and supplying medicines to patients. But manufacturing a new drug means little if it doesn't provide value to patients and the public in a timely way. That's why, in a manufacturing setting, machine health is critical to delivering the right drugs to the right market at the right time. The cost of machine failure impacts not just the pharmaceutical company—it has life-altering consequences for patients.

Fortunately, with the help of Augury's purpose-built artificial intelligence (AI), pharmaceutical manufacturing teams can now tell when their machines are in distress and need maintenance or repair. They can also understand when machines don't require their attention, preventing over-maintenance and saving time and money.

Augury is delivering value immediately, both at the operational and corporate levels thanks to its predictive maintenance technology. Many pharmaceutical and healthcare companies have realized the full potential of their investment in Augury within a few weeks.

Industry Success Stories

U.S. Pharma Site Saves $1.8M Annually by Optimizing Planned Maintenance and Labor with AI and ML

A global pharmaceutical giant with sites in the U.S. was looking to optimize operations to minimize costly downtime occurrences. At the same time, it wanted to improve efficiency with its high-cost labor resources by providing proactive and automatic planned maintenance (PM). The main issue plaguing the pharma company's manufacturing site was the lack of visibility, which was preventing the maintenance team from properly diagnosing machine health.

Since deploying the solution, the maintenance team has been able to schedule condition-based maintenance to proactively address developing issues and avoid downtime. The pharma company gained back 72% of the time that its maintenance team was spending on PM and routine tasks. It could also reallocate resources to other sites.

By providing both machine-level and facility-level insights, Augury empowers the on-site team to focus on the equipment that needs the most immediate attention. The company now successfully mitigates a total of 14.4 PM hours wasted per week, per technician (or nearly 15K hours annually), and eliminates unexpected failures. Overall, it could save $36,000 per week, per site, for an annual total of $1.8 million. What’s more, the company has seen a reduction in unplanned downtime, lowered repair costs, and is focusing on upskilling its resources to do more challenging work.

Biosimilar Pharma Company Saves 2.1 Million Doses by Avoiding Unplanned Downtime

A leading U.S.-based generic and biosimilar pharma company was looking to gain full visibility of the health of its production equipment and have around-the-clock monitoring. Each time machines failed unexpectedly, it caused major disruption to the entire manufacturing process. Moreover, maintenance costs were skyrocketing. The company needed more control over its manufacturing facility and planned maintenance actions.

The company used Augury’s Machine Health for Critical Equipment, including its Bosch Sig Flow Wrapper packaging machine. Recently, Augury’s AI detected abnormal behavior in the Wrapper. Augury’s vibration analyst informed the on-site maintenance team about issues caused by loose or worn parts, seized components, or excessive thermal growth. The analyst then recommended to check for elevated machine/component temperatures and inspect the shaft for any resistance.

It was later revealed that the vibrations increased due to belt wear and tension. Augury’s vibration analyst recommended that the motor be replaced. A scheduled shutdown was carried out and the machine was repaired, saving more than 2.1 million doses from being spoiled due to not getting packed and stored in cold storage on time.

Oral Solid Dose Manufacturer Avoids Three Shifts of Production Loss

A U.S.-based oral solid-dose manufacturer operated with a preventive maintenance program on its production assets. The management team wanted to enhance the company’s plant maintenance and leverage accurate insights on the health status of each piece of equipment.

To move from a preventive to proactive maintenance strategy, Augury’s Machine Health for Critical Equipment was used for the pharma manufacturer’s production assets, including Korsch 400XL Tablet Press. Augury’s sensors worked 24/7 to capture and transmit vibration, temperature, and magnetic flux data to the Augury platform.

With Augury's continuous AI always on watch, the system immediately detected abnormal vibrations in the main motor of the tablet press. A vibration analyst contacted the on-site maintenance team to inform them of the potential bearing wear. The analyst recommended inspecting the motor bearings and taking action during a planned maintenance window.

If not for this early detection, the bearing wear in the main motor of the tablet press could have failed, resulting in three shifts of production loss and a waste of up to 10.3 million multi-tip or 5.15 million single-tip drug doses, depending on what was in production at the time.

Multinational Bioproduction Company Avoids Massive Schedule Disruption and Saves More Than $1M in Batch Losses

A leading global healthcare company was looking to extend the life of its equipment and ensure minimal maintenance expenditure. Known as an innovation leader within the pharmaceutical industry, the company wanted to use AI to predict failures before they happened.

In its bioproduction facility, Augury’s AI detected high vibrations in one of its air handling units. The vibration analyst alerted the on-site maintenance team that the high vibrations were due to bearing wear in the motor. The on-site team replaced the bearings before they could cause any damage, ultimately saving the company more than $1 million.

Get the Predictive Maintenance Advantage with Augury

Augury is empowering pharma manufacturers to take action based on the real-time condition of their machines, thus avoiding unplanned downtime and cutting down on repair and labor costs, while providing rapid ROI and speeding up drug delivery to patients.