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Laying the Digital Foundation for Growth
Valent BioSciences Transforms Peper Batch Records Into Data-Driven Operational Efficiency With Ecolab CLEEN
Background
Laying the Digital Foundation for Growth
Valent BioSciences is a global leader in the development and commercialization of innovative biorational technologies that help improve agricultural productivity and protect public health and environmental sustainability.
As part of the company’s innovation roadmap, Valent BioSciences identified the need to digitize record-keeping and reporting to achieve increased visibility and enable the ability to drive quality, efficiency and performance across its operations.
“As you’re growing, it gets very cumbersome to manage paper records,” explains Tomas Vazquez, Digital Innovation Coordinator at Valent BioSciences.
“Digitizing records lets you use analytics to correct issues and capture opportunities sooner, so you can accelerate your growth.”
Deployment
Resolving the Pain Points of Manual, Paper-Based Record Keeping
At Valent BioSciences’ main production facilities in Osage, Iowa, paper batch records created growing operational challenges.
Much like baking an industrial-sized cake, their production processes involve detailed steps and precise measurements.
Plant staff manually recorded everything through paper records, validating each step along the way.
Beyond the time-consuming validation itself, the plant increasingly recognized issues in how they were able – or unable – to use those paper records for analysis and improvement.
Manual paper processes created bottlenecks:
- Reviewing and approving batch records took hours
- Reporting and investigations required slow, manual workflows
- Root-cause analyses were difficult without accessible historical data
- Staff spent two hours per day just printing records in the QC lab
“Our immediate goals were to reduce the amount of time spent on paper documentation and eliminate paperwork errors,” says Richard Gordon, Digital Transformation Lead.
Plant leaders also wanted to use digitization to build quality into core workflows (rather than post-hoc), and to move toward data-driven issue prioritization. “Ultimately, we want to exploit our capacity,” says Gordon.
“We have a lot of demand, so how can we use digital insights to get as much as we can out of the plant?”
Solution
Ecolab CLEEN Platform Outshines Competing Vendor
Valent BioSciences had begun working with another vendor to implement a platform to digitize batch records, but had concerns around the platform capabilities and flexibility.
At the same time, Valent BioSciences began working with Ecolab to digitize processes within the Osage plant’s quality control (QC) lab, where staff often spent two hours a day just printing paper records. The experience with the Ecolab CLEEN platform in the QC lab sharply contrasted their experience with the other platform and vendor.
Moreover, Ecolab’s responsiveness made a huge difference. Ecolab has provided chemistry solutions to Valent BioSciences for nearly a decade, and the same trusted partnership came through in Valent BioSciences’ experience with the CLEEN platform.
“They were so open to capturing our requirements and tailoring the solution. We thought, ‘Wow, they made progress on that so fast,’ and we saw an opportunity to help with our EBR (electronic batch records) initiative where the other vendor was falling short,” says Vazquez.
“The user experience immediately stood out – it was very good.” –Tomas Vazquez, Digital Innovation Coordinator
Ecolab Partnership Accelerates Implementation
As Valent BioSciences shifted its EBR digitization to Ecolab, scoping the configuration of 52 production processes, that same responsive collaboration drove a successful implementation. “On the project management side, they had dedicated resources and we had regular meetings so we were all aware of what’s coming. The communication was very clear,” says Vazquez. “The CLEEN team was highly responsive to user feedback and opportunities for further customization were corrected quickly,” echoed Gordon.
“If we asked for something, the CLEEN team figured out a way to make it happen.” –Tomas Vazquez, Digital Innovation Coordinator
For example, in integrating CLEEN with the Valent BioSciences facility’s plant intelligence (PI) system, “There was collaborative work between teams,” says Vazquez. “The CLEEN team was willing to have as many meetings as needed to provide clarity to IT.”
Batch Review and Reconciliation:
20 days
to
1 day
Batches Processed:
1800
Data Entries Reduced by:
60%
Hours Saved on Documentation:
2,700 hrs
*Client Supplied Data
Results
Rapidly Modernizing Core Plant Workflows
In short order, Valent BioSciences has made huge strides in digitization with the Ecolab CLEEN platform. “So far, we’ve configured all of our processes in CLEEN and we’ve already shifted 30 of them to fully paperless,” says Vazquez. Gordon explains that CLEEN has also profoundly changed the experience of working on the production floor and managing plant performance:
BEFORE CLEEN
- Paper records
- 2 hours/day printing
- Manual reviews
- Lost/damaged books
- Illegible handwriting
- Hours to find data
AFTER CLEEN
- Digital workflows
- Real-time documentation
- Instant visibility
- Always accessible in cloud
- Typed, validated entries
- Searchable records in seconds
Integrating Plant Intelligence for Broader Monitoring and Alerting
With its EBRs and core processes digitized, the plant is now working on expanding its CLEEN use cases by bringing in more plant data.
As mentioned, the plant is integrating CLEEN with its PI system, bringing in the full range of automatic sensor data from plant equipment.
“This will enable us to improve overall equipment effectiveness,” says Vazquez.
Gordon says the plant is also building out CLEEN’s robust alerting capabilities. “We’ll be using CLEEN alerts to focus our attention on where we can improve.
Building Business Intelligence on Top of Operational Efficiency
As expected, the most immediate impacts of digitization with the CLEEN platform center on time-saving efficiencies.
“Instead of spending 20 minutes a day printing records, our people have digitally enabled processes that are so much faster and smoother,” says Vazquez.
“People aren’t wasting time trying to track down a binder in the plant,” says Gordon, “Now it’s always accessible, right when you need it.”
But it’s the speed and depth of visibility offered by CLEEN that will deliver bigger-picture benefits for the plant.
“We’re building out a digital status board that will display all of the different batches in progress,” says Gordon. “It will give operators real-time updates on what’s going on and what next steps are – and it will give insights on what’s going well and what’s not going well.”
Looking Ahead
Buoyed by the success of the CLEEN implementation, the plant is now working on building out a full-scale manufacturing execution system, or MES.
The MES will digitize everything from production scheduling and downtime tracking to quality checks and compliance audits – all with an aim to eliminate inefficiency of manual record-keeping, build quality into digital workflows, and enable real-time reporting and investigation through digital records.
“CLEEN will be a key element of our MES,” explains Gordon. “The goal is to make CLEEN the only interface for our frontline operators on the floor. We have other tools, but CLEEN is the interface we want our operators looking at – the UX is that good.”
CLEEN by Ecolab
A digital platform built to transform the way life sciences organizations manage business-critical practices to protecting data integrity and driving operational excellence.
“Instead of spending 20 minutes a day printing records, our people have digitally enabled processes that are so much faster and smoother. People aren’t wasting time trying to track down a binder in the plant. Now it’s always accessible, right when you need it.”
— Richard Gordon, Digital Transformation Lead, and Tomas Vazquez, Digital Innovation Coordinator at Valent BioSciences