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French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur—the world's largest company devoted solely to the manufacture of vaccines—recently implemented digital instrumentation on the entire process control system at its Neuville-sur-Saône facility. Philip Genthon, senior instrumentation & automation engineer at Sanofi Pasteur, discussed the project this week at the 2013 Emerson Global Users Exchange in Stuttgart, Germany.

“Our goals at the Neuville-sur-Saône plant were to reduce the cost and complexity of wiring throughout the process, while streamlining maintenance operations and scaling back the time needed for commissioning,” Genthon said. The project schedule began with a study phase that included half-day conferences with each of the suppliers and ended with three days of training for the technicians who would work on the installation.

“We decided to implement digital instrumentation on all process equipment and utilities plantwide. This ultimately involved installing around 700 digital temperature, pressure, flow, pH and oxygen sensors; 4,000 digital I/O points for valves, motors, and pumps; and about 100 digital actuators—all of which are linked to a network of 35 controller modules and 28 human-machine interface workstations.”

“With a fully digital architecture, we have been able to reach a very high level of accuracy compared to analog for critical temperature and pH measurements without using a large amount of specific instruments,” Genthon continued. “Furthermore, we reduced the number of cables needed in the facility by a factor of eight, and cut the size of our cable trays in half.”

The commissioning phase is also much simpler with digital, Genthon explained, because it allows engineers to check process control system connections faster and with fewer errors. This shaved about 120 working days off the installation project's schedule. Digital instrumentation also enabled Sanofi to calibrate the instruments prior to installation, thanks to pre-loaded parameters. “We saved five weeks because we were able to perform calibration in the metrology lab before-hand rather than onsite during commissioning,” Genthon said.

“Process managers can also monitor the aging and performance of digital instruments more easily with asset management software, which facilitates preventive and predictive maintenance programs. Curative maintenance is also possible with 'plug and play' pre-calibrated instruments that can immediately replace malfunctioning equipment without the need for a calibration bench at the site.”

“In a complex life science operation like ours, there is virtually no room for error. Pervasive digital instrumentation is a good way to achieve the level of accuracy and reliability necessary to maintain our rigorous quality control standards. It also happens to be a far simpler solution with no extra cost when compared to conventional analog technology. The choice, at least for us, has been an easy one.”