B Braun gets Industry 4.0-ready

B. Braun Medical Industries is to embrace the digital manufacturing revolution with the installation of Critical Manufacturing’s Medical Device Manufacturing Execution System (MES/MOM).

Critical Manufacturing will help B. Braun Medical Industries to future proof and prepare its manufacturing operations for Industry 4.0 using the latest technology.

B. Braun boasts production sites around the world, and has ten in the Asia Pacific region alone. In Penang, B. Braun Medical Industries is the group’s largest production site with over 7,500 employees working in five large plants, specialising in intravenous access devices, infusion solutions and surgical instruments.

Critical Manufacturing will implement its complete MES, together with its unified Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) and Equipment Integration (EI) modules. This should enable B. Braun to leverage paperless digital manufacturing processes to improve flexibility, agility, operational effectiveness and product quality whilst reducing operating costs.

With the system in place, B. Braun Medical Industries  will be able to readily scale MES across its expanding sites and easily adapt to the future needs of the business. In addition, Critical Manufacturing’s MES will help B. Braun to capture real-time information and make it available across its sites, as well as connect all its equipment, various information systems and operator interfaces to regulate all aspects of production.

Francisco Almada Lobo, CEO of Critical Manufacturing stated: “Critical Manufacturing recognises that Industry 4.0 capabilities will be a game changer for medical device manufacturers, such as B. Braun. Critical Manufacturing’s MES was designed and built from the ground up to make Industry 4.0 a reality for innovative and complex manufacturers. In contrast with traditional MES, we have no legacy technology and the system is cutting edge.”

“We were selected by B. Braun Medical Industries because of the openness, flexibility and extensibility of CM’s MES, in which all modules and functionalities work across the same scalable platform, and provide a consistent user interface and experience across all the different functions. Our single solution also reduces validation costs”

Lobo concluded: “Critical manufacturing is committed to B. Braun’s success, both in our project execution approach and our flexibility to meet all of their long-term needs. We will use a joint project team to configure our system and build the competence to maintain it for the foreseeable future. We are confident that we will help B. Braun Medical Industries become a global benchmark for advanced and innovative medical manufacturing.”