The Industry 4.0 platform or the Industrial Internet Consortium? RAMI or IIRA? Observe the standards meticulously or just do it? In the matter of procedures to be followed for manufacturing in the future and the Internet of Things, the differences between Germany and the USA may not be unbridgeable, but they are definitely conspicuous.

Under the terms of the contract, ABB will improve asset integrity across MOL’s downstream assets. On completion, the MOL group is expected to witness production improvements of approximately 12 million dollars a year across all its downstream assets.

Hamilton Bonaduz’s Process Analytics published the new edition of its comprehensive catalogue ‘Process Analytics Measuring Solutions’, at the beginning of June. It provides useful information regarding the new developments, next to the proven sensors, cables, transmitters and housings.

With an aim to further support its extreme cryogenics business, Air Liquide has taken over a majority stake in Cryoconcept, a firm specialising in dilution refrigeration. With this move, the company will be able to offer its customers with a complete range of products and services across the entire cold chain.

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) welcomed Sartorius as its new shareholder and together the companies plan to extend their partnership to develop future-focused tools and AI applications for the production of advanced medications.

In the challenging market environment, Bayer has decided to introduce additional operational savings of more than 1.7 billion dollars every year annually as of 2024. The cash flow from these efforts will be allocated for investments in further innovation, profitable growth opportunities and debt reduction.

With the mega investment, Merck will expand its high-potent active pharmaceutical ingredient (Hpapi) and antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) manufacturing capabilities. The new 6,500-sq m facility is expected to be one of the largest Hpapi manufacturing facilities capable of handling single-digit nanogram occupational exposure limit materials.

Oxone monopersulfate is a core active ingredient for disinfectants and Lanxess aims to increase its production capacity by around 50 %. For this purpose, the firm will invest a lower double-digit million euro amount in its Memphis production unit in the USA. The move is in line with the growing demand for disinfectants in the background of the African swine fever and Covid-19.

A global survey conducted by Yokogawa has revealed that process industry companies are accelerating investment in industrial autonomy in the background of the current Covid-19 pandemic. Cyber security (51 %), cloud, analytics, and big data (47 %), and artificial intelligence (42 %) are three vital areas in which companies are planning significant investment over the next three years.

Continuous production is steadily gaining momentum as a practical strategic option for pharmaceutical manufacture —  The market is actively looking for technical solutions and equipment manufacturer Glatt presented a new continuously operated process system at Achema which addressed the topic of Traceability and showed a solution which guarantees the operator a high level of pharmaceutical safety.