Shaping the future of pharma manufacturing

While the pharmaceutical industry is measured by its commitment to improve patients' quality of life, manufacturers simultaneously face an increasingly complex situation.

Among the key requirements are safeguarding and tracing supply chains, maintaining consistently high product quality and data integrity, ensuring smooth process development and technology transfer, accelerating time to market, as well as coping with persistent cost pressures. The industry must evolve to meet these challenges, managing the complexity of drug manufacturing, and serving patients even better.
 

Defining standards for the industry – Körber experts engage in industry associations

To help shaping the future of pharma manufacturing, Körber actively engages in various industry associations such as the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE), the Parenteral Drug Association (PDA), the BioPhorum, and the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA). 

In these organizations, industry leaders and subject matter experts from the pharmaceutical and biotech industries collaborate to develop solutions for current problems. Our experts chair and participate in working groups, curate conferences, and deliver keynote presentations. In this way, together with the community we help define new processes and standards for the industry.

Introducing Pharma 4.0

As an ISPE Gold Corporate Partner, Körber is uniquely positioned to support the pharma and biotech industry, providing in-depth thought leadership and technical innovation to our clients. The contributions, insights, and participation of our experts in ISPE special interest groups and communities of practice represent a great opportunity to jointly address how our industry is evolving to meet the challenges ahead. 

It was our expert, Christian Wölbeling, who, along with other ISPE members, coined the concept of "Pharma 4.0" and is the founder and chairman of the ISPE Community of Practice "Pharma 4.0". Most recently Christian acted as one of the lead authors of the “ISPE Pharma 4.0 Baseline Guide”, covering the benefits of a holistic control strategy, quality management opportunities, and the foundational processes for an interconnected plant architecture.

How Körber emerged as a top ally of the PDA

Körber has tremendously evolved its partnership with the PDA over the past years. What began as a mere attendance to a certain conference has grown into a strategic collaboration. Today, we are proud to be a partner of the PDA in Europe, the US, and Asia-Pacific. 

As a result of this partnership, Körber has supported countless conferences, participated in lots of global committees, and has submitted myriad abstracts to share its latest thoughts with industry peers. We have expanded our engagement to new areas, such as packaging machines and materials, digital transformation, and sustainability.

BioPhorum

We have also contributed our expertise to BioPhorum’s frequently referenced “Digital Plant Maturity Model”, a structured and straightforward tool to assess the digital maturity of pharmaceutical plants. Additionally, along with other authors, our experts Jamie Glasser and Dr. Judith Koliwer authored the BioPhorum publication "Standardizing Traceability of Personalized Cell and Gene Therapies" to develop an approach to traceability for cell and gene therapies across the entire value chain.

The voice of the Indian national industry

The IDMA brings together more than 1,000 leading Indian pharmaceutical companies. The industry association regularly hosts seminars, training programs, and workshops for the benefit of its members and the broader pharmaceutical industry. We play a vital role in the IDMA by empowering the Indian pharma community with knowledge and tools essential for navigating digital transformation in pharma manufacturing.

Developing products and solutions

Our active participation in associations and committees contributes to the continuous development of our products and services. For example, we provide PAS-X MSI Plug & Produce, an open, vendor-independent solution that provides a universal integration interface fully aligned with the standardization objectives of the ISPE Plug & Produce working group.

As an international technology group and a strategic partner, we offer our customers individual overall solutions for their factory of excellence. We do this by means of our sustainable ecosystem approach, in which we bring together the most important experts from all the relevant areas of our partner network. In the process, rather than emphasizing our individual products, we look at the holistic needs and visions of our customers to ensure their sustained success. In the field of cell & gene therapy, for instance, we partner with leading providers such as HyperTrust and TrakCel to establish standardized interfaces between manufacturing and logistics. 

We deliver the difference in pharma. Let us guide you on your digital transformation journey to elevate your business.