Monitoring Quality and Safety in a Pharmaceutical Lab, Part 1

Paul Fedyna, Maintenance Engineer, Facilities Engineering, SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals and Glenn Fairchild, Sales Representative, Bently Nevada Corporation

Pharmaceutical research and development requires a well-regulated environment. SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals operates a comprehensive system that maintains the environment of its research and development laboratories in Upper Providence Township, Pa. The 92,000-square meter (1 million square foot) complex has 65,000 square meters (700,000 square feet) of laboratory space. Within it are laboratory areas designated as Good Laboratory Practices and Good Manufacturing Practices. The laboratories require stringent operating conditions, and reliable quality and safety systems. Air pressure, temperature and humidity must be accurately maintained and documented for regulatory agency reports. The equipment that maintains the environment in those areas is critical to plant operation. That equipment includes air handling fans, chillers, cooling tower fans and boiler feed pumps. The exhaust fans that vent potentially hazardous or toxic substances are extremely critical.

SmithKline Beecham's Facilities Engineering Department, working with area Laboratory Managers, identified 150 pieces of equipment that were critical to scientific research and employee safety. It was decided that those machines required a monitoring system that would provide accurate and reliable information for monitoring and evaluating equipment condition to:

• Reduce machinery downtime, avoid catastrophic failures and any interruption to research.
• Reduce maintenance costs, in both labor and materials.
• Extend equipment life.
  

The Facilities Engineering Department's investigation showed that a permanent vibration monitoring system was essential for detecting machine problems at an early stage of development. It also showed that a system which trended vibration and had diagnostic tools could greatly reduce maintenance costs. SmithKline decided to install permanent vibration monitoring equipment on all 150 critical machines, and to link the monitors to a computerized trending and diagnostic system.

SmithKline Beecham chose a Bently Nevada permanent monitoring system for both continuous and periodic monitoring. The continuous monitors protect machines from damage. The periodic monitoring system trends machine vibration and displays vibration in diagnostic plots. In the three years since the system was installed, there have been a significant number of equipment problems discovered. Without a continuous monitoring system these problems would have become much more severe and expensive to correct.

Three-Phase Installation
The project team decided to implement its monitoring system in three phases. In phase one, vibration transducers and continuous monitoring systems were installed on each critical machine. A Bently Nevada 89129 Accelerometer was installed (on each machine), in a location that provides the best "overall condition" measurement. The 89129 Accelerometer has a micro-machined silicon sensor that gives it the mechanical integrity of an accelerometer, but at a cost comparable to a velocity transducer. Specially-designed brackets were used to simplify accelerometer installation (Figure 1).

Each accelerometer was connected to a Bently Nevada 1900/25 Monitor. The 1900/25 Vibration Monitors are single-channel, cost-effective continuous monitoring systems for essential and general-purpose machinery. The 1900/25 Monitors were mounted in groups in several mechanical equipment rooms (Figure 2). The Alert relays on each group of monitors were connected to a strobe light (Figure 3) in each mechanical equipment room. The strobe light warns technicians when an alert condition occurs. Each monitor's Danger relay is connected to a machine control system for automatic shutdown. If vibration increases 30% above normal, the 1900/25 Monitor shuts down the machine, and the Building Automation System (BAS) automatically starts up a redundant unit.

The 1900/25 Vibration Monitors that SmithKline Beecham selected have a built-in Trendmaster® 2000 interface, which made it easy to implement phase two of the machinery protection system plan. In the second phase, SmithKline Beecham installed Bently Nevada's Trendmaster 2000 for Windows System, to automate data collection and provide online diagnostics. Trendmaster 2000 for Windows is a computer-based, online system that automatically samples, processes and trends vibration data. It is a periodic monitoring system; each point is sampled at regular, short intervals, rather than continuously. Periodic monitoring allows a single signal cable to carry the data from up to 255 points. This design vastly reduces wiring costs. Compared with systems that require an individual wire for each transducer, Trendmaster 2000 for Windows is significantly less expensive to install and expand. In fact, SmithKline Beecham used the existing phone cable system to connect the 1900/25 Monitors to the Host Trendmaster 2000 Computer, which is located in the Central Utilities Plant.

Trendmaster 2000 for Windows can be easily integrated into computer networks and Distributed Control Systems. This was an important reason the system was chosen. In the third phase of the installation, Facilities Engineering plans that the Trendmaster 2000 will be integrated into the plant's existing Building Automation System.

Go to "Monitoring Quality and Safety in a Pharmaceutical Lab," Part 2