September 11, 2018

Overview

A drug manufacturing plant in India hired Grantek to design and install Building Automation Systems (BAS) to monitor their stability chambers. These chambers verify the long-term stability of the facility’s products under varied environmental conditions. Production samples are placed into the chamber and exposed to various temperature and humidity conditions to analyze product stability over time.

Challenges

• The facility requires that equipment used in Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) production be monitored separately from non-GMP building systems. The stability chamber BAS must be separate from other monitoring systems.
• The customer needs a configurable system to accommodate the wide range of temperatures and humidity levels that the stability chambers achieve during product testing. The sensor alert ranges must be selectable to correspond with the settings required for each batch of product being tested.

Solution

• Grantek designed and installed a BAS for the stability chambers only.
• Grantek added non-proprietary temperature and humidity sensors to the chambers and installed and configured software to monitor the chambers and ensure that they maintain the temperature/humidity ranges specified in the stability testing protocols for each product.
• Grantek designed a system that is easily configurable for use in monitoring a wide range of environmental conditions to which the chambers might be set.
• Grantek provided instructions on how to reset alarms/alerts to match the test protocols.

Results

The BAS for the stability chambers was installed within schedule and budget. The facility was pleased with the ability to reconfigure the BAS as needed, and with the system’s reporting capabilities.