Siemens and Sartorius Stedim Biotech have agreed on long-term cooperation in the area of automation. The agreement provides that Sartorious will preferably use Siemens automation technologies for the development and manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.
The agreement includes industrial PCs, the S7-1500 software controller, the TIA Portal and the SCADA system Simatic WinCC, among others.
Sartorius Stedim Biotech has already been using established Siemens automation solutions for process control in its large-scale bioreactor and filtration systems for quite some time. To standardise its product portfolio even further, Sartorious has decided to introduce a new, configurable automation system for its range of systems.
Dr Oscar-Werner Reif, chief technology officer at Sartorius Stedim Biotech, explained: “By introducing this new automation platform and further standardising our products, we are making it easy for our customers to integrate their systems into higher-level automation solutions, such as SCADA, MES or ERP. At the same time, we are enabling them to achieve easier scalability of processes ranging from lab scale to commercial-scale production."
We have found an ideal partner in Siemens as one of the leading companies in automation
Under the agreement recently concluded, cooperation between the two companies will be extended to further Sartorius' products. The biotech's portfolio will be successively equipped with Siemens automated solutions in the coming months and can thus be integrated into process control systems, such as Simatic PCS 7 and Simatic Batch. These products are single-use bioreactors of the BIOSTAT STR series, various filtration systems and the FlexAct system. The latter is a flexible module that is used to control many different process steps within biopharmaceutical production.
Eckard Eberle, CEO of the Siemens Process Automation business unit, commented: “We are happy to support Sartorius Stedim Biotech with our unique and cohesive portfolio consisting of hardware, software and service throughout the entire system life cycle. Based on our cooperation, users in the biopharmaceutical industry stand to benefit from higher efficiency, quality and flexibility, as well as faster time to market.”
During Frankfurt's ACHEMA trade show (11-15 June 2018) Siemens and Sartorius Stedim Biotech will be jointly presenting the FlexAct module, a first product based on the new automation platform.