Emerson Process Management has stepped up its efforts to sell its engineering, process control and digital automation technologies into the life sciences sector with the launch of a new programme, called OpX, At the Interphex exhibition in New York.

OpX has at its heart Emerson’s Plantweb digital architecture, a system of monitoring devices and control software that gather and monitor data on conditions in the facility and addresses the fundamental requirements of PAT. Plantweb has already been applied in a number of life science companies- including Genzyme, Amersham, Indena, Lonza, Novo Nordisk Engineering and IEC- but on the whole the drug industry is only just adopting principles the chemical and food industries have used for decades.

One of the Keys to OpX extension into pharma is the introduction of a new component that, for the first time, can be used to monitor the performance of rotating machinery such as pumps and mixers, used in three quarters of all life sciences process facilities.