A modular approach for modeling active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing plant: A case study

Simulating pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities is often quite challenging due to the complexities involved with their chemical processes, material and energy balance issues, equipment sizing concerns, etc. This problem is further exacerbated by uncertainties in operations and logistics. A single simulation model is unlikely to adequately capture the intricacies which exist in both domains (process and operations) within the pharmaceutical environments. Developing independent models using different tools to capture these details is not unique. However, combining information from different models or feeding outputs of a process model to other process / operational models, to address process and operational questions is an uncommon practice. This paper presents a case study wherein outputs from process simulation model acted as inputs to another process model and operational model to study an entire Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient manufacturing plant.