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2022 EMERSONGLOBALUSERS
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Live from Emerson Global Users Exchange 2022

For more information, visit Emerson’s Boundless Automation web pageTOC
and the Emerson Industrial Software Showcase on LinkedIn.

NOVO NORDISK DEBOTTLENECKS
WITH EMERSON’S RTMs SOFTWARE
By Jim MontagueB

ecause quicker data and answers allow faster decisions and optimization, close to real-time results
enable the fastest solutions.

That’s what Novo Nordisk discovered when it deployed
Emerson’s Real-Time Modeling System (RTMS) in theexpression, engineering and formulation processes for its
therapeutic proteins and peptides products. Implementing
RTMS software allowed the pharmaceutical company to:• Resolve bottlenecks and determine capacity analyses byusing plant data to run what-if scenarios. This identifies
other, previously unseen bottlenecks, which can also be
resolved to improve throughput even more.

times,” said Keith Hope, RTMS engineering manager atEmerson. “Each activity is also mapped to markets in theautomation system, which shows the impact on scheduledactivity, and indicates if maintenance is needed and how
to get back on track.”
Hope and Mikael Johansen, project director at Novo
Nordisk, presented “Hidden treasures: How to unlock
additional value in your plant by adding RTMS software”
this week at the Emerson Exchange Immerse event inAnaheim, Calif.
So far, Novo Nordisk has implemented RTMS at twoof its existing proteins and peptides facilities, and is• Implement unified, site-wide real-time scheduling(RTS) using a Level 2/Level 3 automation-based finite
scheduling module, which produces schedules that arecontinually updated and always feasible using the RTMS
model. This includes integrating RTS with corporate
manufacturing execution system (MES), enterprise
resource planning (ERP), quality management system(QMS), distributed control systems (DCS) and maintenance systems to generate further updates.
• Employ Crosswalk software for statistical analyses, data
fitting and process evolution tracking. This lets users
create datasets from batch historians that RTMS canuse. It also allows analysis independent of RTMS for
use in overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), process
evolution or golden batch projects.
“RTMS lets users add new data to their simulations,recalculate, update schedule times, and adjust future
RTMS lets us know when a high-utilization day is likely
coming, so we can prepare our equipment and systems
to handle them.” Novo Nordisk’s Mikael Johansen
discussed how real-time management system software
helped to dramatically improve unit productivity andprocess operations.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

preparing to install it at a third facility that’s presently
under construction.

Streamlined by scheduling

In 2020, Novo Nordisk deployed RTMS for day-to-day
scheduling on three screens in the control room usedby one plant’s operating teams, which previously trieddifferent planning systems. This plant lacked a unified
production schedule, and had low confidence that it could
ramp up production“We wanted to capture all the knowledge we could forbetter planning, and perhaps add a couple of batches,
which we couldn’t do before due to a lack of training,”
said Johansen. “RTMS let us go from running four or fivebatches per week to five or six batches per week, which
was about a 20% increase in output.”
RTMS also pointed out some gaps in operator competencies among the plant’s teams, which required some tasks
to be done at certain times of day. Making the production schedule more visible during higher run rates showed
where added training was needed. RTMS also codified
and modeled the tacit knowledge that plant staff needed
when scheduling manually, and that model was used totrain new schedulers, process controllers and engineers.

Simulations untangle snags

In 2022, Novo Nordisk adopted RTMS for debottlenecking
analysis at a second plant to reach designed production
rates more quickly and easily, and reports it went on toachieve the fastest ramp-up to full production in the company’s history. This new facility performs upstream anddownstream production with buffer-stock solutions in acomplex tank network and strives to process one batch
every 24 hours.
“We built simulation models for all of the plant’s process steps, which let us add more data to our simulations,”

explained Johansen. “This plant also simulated about 20years of production, and identified long-term bottlenecks,
such as buffering system delays. We often found that removing one bottleneck led us to find more behind the firstone, which gave us an opportunity to resolve those, too.”
Johansen reported that Novo Nordisk also used RTMS
to monitor the utilization loads on its clean-in-place (CIP)
stations. Most averaged 29-37% utilization, but some days
they ran at 60-70%, which could cause delays and risk theloss of a batch due to their often short, critical holding
times. “RTMS lets us know when a high-utilization day
is likely coming, so we can prepare our equipment andsystems to handle them.”

New protein-peptide plant—with robots

While it’s still being built, Novo Nordisk’s third RTMS
deployment is going into its $2.3 billion plant. It will havefour independent mammalian-cell production trains witha shared weigh-and-dispense (W&D) area, and an RTMS
application for each train. At this facility, RTMS will:• Forecast demands for the shared W&D area and perform
real-time tracking of resource constraints for managing
shutdowns and maintenance.
• Help the plant’s automated guided vehicle (AGV) robots
make deliveries by using the RTMS schedule to predict
demand for materials, and work with the AGVs’ fleet manager software to monitor and coordinate their locations.
• Similar to the second plant, RTMS will also be usedduring ramp-up at the third facility to identify process
bottlenecks preventing full-capacity operations.

Real-time lessons learned

Johansen reported that using RTMS taught Novo Nordisk several valuable lessons, such as supporting sites andstaffers to adopt new ways of working.

Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023

“In the past, each team did things in different ways.
RTMS shows where we can optimize and improve operations,” said Johansen. “If a schedule says a process must
be done at 2 p.m., it can’t be done at 3 p.m. because othertasks or processes may need that equipment.”
The system also helped prepare for go-live operations
and transition off old systems, and measure success forfuture gains. “We think old planning systems should
die quickly, instead of running legacy and new systems in parallel for so long before shutting down theold one,” he said. “Even veterans, who know the mostabout these systems, still don’t know everything. This
is where putting all our process knowledge into RTMS
models can be a big help.”

RTMS models also capture key process and scheduling know-how, which mitigates the impact of turnover on
the scheduling team, helps onboard new employees andassists in communication with management. Centralizing
expertise in RTMS drives consistency, improves responsiveness to process needs, and maintains expertise with aconsistent work stream.
Johansen revealed that RTMS even enhanced Novo
Nordisk’s culture. “We had heavy involvement from operations in building our RTMS models. However, when we
first did them, they looked like our operations interfaces
used to. This meant they might not get used if there wasn’t
enough of a difference,” he said. “So, we let the new RTMS
models look like the old displays for a while, and adjusted
them later, which helped us get more buy-in.”Live from Emerson Exchange Immerse 2023