One company, Multiply Labs, has created a system to overcome these challenges by using robots and RoboDK Software.

Using Multiply Labs’ innovative approach, automated cell therapy manufacturing has the potential to significantly reduce costs while ensuring statistically equivalent outcomes to manual processes in terms of cell yields, viability, and phenotype.

This new system could bring about a new era of producing this type of therapy, surpassing the previous time-consuming manual processes, and ultimately, supporting the scalability of cell therapies for patients in need.

Let’s look at how they used RoboDK to create the system.

What Is Cell Therapy Manufacturing

Cell therapy involves growing cells in a controlled environment. These are then placed into the body to replace damaged or diseased cells or modulate the function of the patient’s cells. This therapy is at the forefront of biomedical innovation, being used to treat cancer, autoimmune conditions, and various others.

The challenge with this type of manufacturing is the need to maintain strict purity, potency, and safety throughout the complex multi-stage production process. This involves cultivation of the cells, multiplication, and processing in a controlled environment.

Some of the unique challenges of cell therapy manufacturing include:

• High complexity of both materials and process.
• Tracking and testing of cell activity and safety.
• Need for customization with patient-specific manufacturing.
• Logistical challenges involved in handling live cells.
• Scaling these biological processes to be accessible.

The promises of cell therapy are huge… but only with a reliable process for producing the cells.

Introducing Multiply Labs…

This is where Multiply Labs comes in. The company originates from a shared passion for robotics among its founders, who met at MIT.

Based in San Francisco, California, Multiply Labs specializes in developing industry-leading automated manufacturing systems to produce individualized drugs. The team combines a unique blend of mechanical and electrical engineering, software development, and pharmaceutical science.

The company believes that robotics and automation have great potential for improving patient accessibility and unlocking the scalability of these cell therapy treatments. They aim to create flexible robotic systems that are compatible with the market-leading pharmaceutical manufacturing instruments, so that manufacturers do not need to significantly change their existing processes.

Their systems are modular and can operate in parallel. This allows them to achieve high throughput, as scalability is a core concern for many pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Fred Parietti, CEO and Co-Founder says:

At Multiply Labs, we are actively developing a cell therapy robotic system, which can operate market-leading GMP instruments already widely deployed for cell therapy manufacturing. This is part of our ongoing, company-wide quest to pioneer a fully automated, end-to-end process for cell therapy manufacturing. To bring this vision to life during the development process, we use renders to showcase what we’re building.

The Robotic System for Personalized T-Cells

One of the company’s latest developments is a robotic system for cell therapy manufacturing. The company recently released a peer reviewed study showing that a robotic cell expansion process can match the performance, and reduce the cost of a manual process. 

The system leverages robotic modules, automating market-leading instruments currently leveraged for cell therapy manufacturing. Manufacturers have the flexibility to combine and mix and match robotic modules to best match their process, and they can drive high throughput via multiple parallel modules. 

Multiply Labs tested the robotic system against a comparable manual process. They found that the results were statistically indistinguishable.

Fred Parietti, the company’s co-founder and CEO, says:

We are so excited by this initial data as it opens the door to accelerating the availability of cell therapies. This data demonstrates that manufacturers can confidently automate their existing processes for cell expansion, without making significant modifications to the process itself, effectively minimizing bioprocess and regulatory risks.

With more automation, the labor cost of cell therapy manufacturing can be lowered enough to make cell therapies accessible to many more people.

The Role of RoboDK

RoboDK was a key part of creating the company’s modular robotic system. The team used it for early research, simulation creation, debugging, rendering, and various other stages of their development.

A unique aspect of how the team used RoboDK was in their rendering of the simulations, to demonstrate what Multiply Labs is trying to achieve before the physical prototype was ready.

Xiaojie Chen, robotics engineer at Multiply Labs, says:

We started using RoboDK in March 2023 and found it’s an excellent solution to help the team. The RoboDK team also rapidly solved the bugs we saw during the beta, so we are one of the first teams to use this function. The entire project was done incredibly fast, with several team members working closely.

5 Key Ways Multiply Labs Used RoboDK

RoboDK was instrumental in the team’s achievement at various stages of their development.

Here are 5 key ways the team used RoboDK:

• Early Research and Collision Prevention — The team first used RoboDK to conduct early research tests and ensure that there were no collisions between components.
• Creating Accurate Simulations — RoboDK’s ability to simulate very accurate motions was a critical factor to Multiply Labs using it.
• Rendering and Blender Export — The team wanted to create high-quality visual renderings of their simulations to demonstrate the prototype. For this, they created the models in CAD, ran the simulations in RoboDK, then exported into Blender using an Add-in for further rendering.
• Rapid Response to Feedback — One benefit to using RoboDK is that it allows smooth passing of models with other software packages. Its Blender Export function, for example, allowed the team to save a lot of time and get rapid feedback from the team.
• Education and Efficiency — The ease of learning was an essential aspect to Multiply Lab’s adoption of RoboDK. It allowed their engineers to focus on engineering rather than learning new software

Changing Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Multiply Labs is passionate not only about robotics, but about creating a future where manufacturing of life-saving cell therapies is accessible, efficient, and reliable.

Currently, the development and manufacturing of cell therapies are exorbitantly expensive, hindering broad access to life-saving treatments. In fact, as much as 50% of manufacturing costs stem from labor-intensive manual processes and a lack of skilled workers. By employing Multiply Labs’ innovative approach, automated cell therapy manufacturing has the potential to significantly reduce costs while driving increased scalability.

What questions do you have about this? Tell us in the comments below or join the discussion on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or in the RoboDK Forum.. Also, check out our extensive video collection and subscribe to the RoboDK YouTube Channel

The post Transforming Cell Therapy Manufacturing: The Power of Robotics at Multiply Labs appeared first on RoboDK blog.

But, what robot applications should you deploy in your company?

Which of your tasks are suitable to give to a robot?

The pharmaceutical industry has experienced a lot of changes recently. The world has been moving quickly and companies have had to adapt their processes to keep up.

Robots are one of the prime technologies that pharmaceutical companies are using to keep ahead of the curve. According to a recent report, the growth of robotics in the pharmaceutical industry is currently higher than in other industries.

You might be looking at this trend and thinking “Should my company add more robots to our operations?”

Maybe you have used robots before or maybe this is the first time you are thinking about using them. Either way, it can be difficult to know which application you should choose to get the most out of your investment.

Are Robots Really Relevant to My Business?

If you search for advice about robotics in the pharmaceutical industry, useful information is rather thin on the ground compared to some other industries. Most of the good blogs — ours included — speak to manufacturers more often than we do to pharmaceutical companies specifically.

This might lead you to wrongly assume that robots are less used in the pharmaceutical industry.

You might look at suggested applications such as robot machining, painting, and welding, and think… are these really relevant to my business?

However, many great robot applications can be beneficial to the day-to-day needs of a company like yours.

Even though there might be less information out there, your competitors are probably already using robots. According to a recent article from the PharmaTimes, there is a growing reliance on robotics and automation within the industry, particularly since 2020.

How to Identify the Right Application for a Pharmaceutical Company

The key to finding a good robot application for you is to focus on those that will give you a quick win.

Think about the benefits that the robot will bring that are most important to you and your business.

Common impacts of robotics on pharmaceutical companies include:

• Increased productivity — Robots can improve the production output of a particular task.
• Better consistency — A robot will always complete the task in exactly the same way every time, which improves product consistency.
• Reduction in downtime — A robot can run 24 hours a day, if necessary, and does not need to take breaks.
• Increased flexibility — With the right programming tools, you can quickly change the robot’s task to respond to changes.
• Faster time to market — Robots are helping many pharmaceutical companies to “plan for the unknown” by giving them more responsive R&D.

Think about which of these benefits will be most impactful for you and your business.

Which tasks, in particular, would most benefit from these effects? These are good signs that a task might be a good candidate to give to a robot.

It is also helpful to think about which tasks will allow you to get a quicker return on investment with the least amount of upheaval. These are good candidates for your first robot deployments. After you have had some success with your first robot applications, you can move onto other tasks.

6 Robot Applications for Pharmaceutical Companies

Many robots could be right for pharmaceutical companies.

Here are 6 potential applications that work well in pharmaceutical companies:

1. Pick and Place

As the name suggests, pick and place involves moving objects from one space to another. This could mean moving items from a conveyor into a work area, sorting items for further processing, or any similar task.

Examples of pick and place tasks include sorting bottles of medicaments, arranging syringes for packaging, and removing defective products during inspection.

2. Inspection

Inspection is an arduous task in any industry and the ramifications of inconsistent inspection could be catastrophic for a pharmaceutical company. Robots are a great way to improve the consistency of inspection tasks.

An example of an inspection task might include checking that all compartments in a blister pack are filled.

3. Capping Bottles

A common task in some pharmaceutical companies, capping bottles is a tried and tested robotic application. With the right robot, end effector, and sensors, capping bottles with a robot can make for a faster, more consistent process.

An example of a bottle capping task might be to place caps on medication bottles.

4. Dispensing

Dispensing is a task that people don’t always consider for a robot. However, robotic dispensing is used in various situations from gluing to food production. Either the dispensing tool is fixed to the robot or the robot moves containers under a dispensing machine.

An example of a dispensing task might be to fill syringes with medication.

5. Machine tending

There are plenty of semi-autonomous machines in the pharmaceutical industry. Usually, these are loaded and unloaded by a human operator. However, this is not the best use of the person’s time. A robot is a much better option for machine tending tasks, allowing the operators to carry out more value-added tasks.

An example of a machine tending task might be to feed samples into a testing machine.

6. Packaging

Every product that leaves your business needs to be packaged. There are usually multiple opportunities to hand off packaging tasks to robots within a pharmaceutical company.

Examples of packaging tasks include packing products into individual bags, loading products onto trays, and stacking boxes onto pallets.

How to get your robot up and running quickly

As you can see, there are various options for robot applications that you could introduce into your business. In addition, there are even more options aside from the ones listed in this article.

If you are looking to get started with a robot deployment, one of the most important decisions you will make is what programming tool you will use.

The right programming tool will make your life easy while the wrong tool could add weeks to your robot deployment.

Click here to learn about a programming tool that can get your robot up and running quickly.

What task sounds good to you? Tell us in the comments below or join the discussion on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or in the RoboDK Forum.

The post 6 Robot Applications for Pharmaceutical Companies appeared first on RoboDK blog.

Is your industry included?

Are your competitors using more robots?

Or is your industry lagging behind?

Robots have been used in some industries for decades. The automotive industry, for example, has been using industrial robots since they were first introduced in the early 1960s. This industry remains one of the major users of industrial robots.

But, some industries have only recently begun to embrace industrial robotics.

According to a recent report by the Robotic Industries Association, several industries have seen a surge in robotics use in the last year or so.

Which industries are seeing the most robotics growth right now?

Here is the list of the top 6 industries:

1. Life Sciences and Pharmaceutical

In the first place, the pharmaceutical industry has experienced some significant impacts over the past year. Indeed, with 2020 bringing a global pandemic, the industry had to rapidly alter its processes to respond to the emerging and changing health situations. Thus, automation has been one of the major ways that companies in this industry have been able to keep up with the required production and maintain social distancing guidelines.

As a result of these changes, the life sciences and pharmaceutical industry has seen the highest growth in robotics in the past year. There has been a 69% year-on-year growth in new robot orders.

Robotics are convenient in a variety of ways in this industry; from machine tending of testing machines, sorting of specimens, and manufacturing of new medical devices. Whether this growth continues in the industry will probably depend on how the global situation progresses.

2. Food and Consumer Goods

The food industry has been adopting automation steadily over the last several years. This is also true in the consumer goods industry. In fact, both industries increasingly require shorter turnaround times as consumers demand products faster. This is all thanks to the rise in online shopping. Robotics is one reliable way for companies to keep operations flexible.

This past year, the food and consumer goods industry experienced a 56% year-on-year growth in new robot orders.

Robots are applicable in many areas of operation in this industry from manufacturing to packaging and logistics. Common tasks in the food and consumer goods industry include palletizing, labeling, and pick and place. They are also useful in process tasks such as; robotic butchery, machining, and welding.

3. Plastics and Rubber

The plastics and rubber industry is a vital part of modern business. With the increasing demand for packaging and consumer goods, companies operating in this industry have to continuously make changes to keep up. Also, the mounting pressure from consumers and governments to reduce the environmental impact of plastics means that manufacturers in the industry need to keep innovating. If they fail to do so, they may risk their future.

Robotics is an increasingly popular way to add the required flexibility and agility, without spending huge amounts on altering existing automation and other processes.

This past year, the plastics and rubber industry experienced a 51% year-on-year growth in new robot orders.

Robots are used for a variety of different applications within the plastics industry. This includes loading and unloading of mold machines, inspection, assembly, and packing.

4. Automotive

The automotive sector has long been the trailblazer in robotic adoption. The first industrial robot, the Unimate, was deployed in a General Motors manufacturing plant back in 1959. The industry has continued to employ robots. They continued not just for their productivity benefits but for their accuracy and consistency. As cars have become more complex, precision machines, robots have helped automotive manufacturers to grow.

Despite the long history of robotics in the industry, there are still more opportunities for new robot applications. Robot adoption continues to rise as well. This year, the automotive industry experienced a 39% year-on-year growth in new robot orders.

Important robot applications for automotive manufacturers include spot and arc welding, assembly, painting, machining, and internal logistics.

5. Semiconductors, Electronics, and Photonics

In this world of rapidly changing computing and electronics, it is no surprise that the semiconductor and electronics industry is turning to robotics to keep up with demand. A connected industry is photonics, which deals with light-related technologies such as digital cameras and measurement equipment.

The use of robots in these industries is not yet as widespread as with the previously mentioned industries. However, robots are being used more and more to allow manufacturers to respond more quickly to changes in the market and their technology products.

This past year, the semiconductor, electronics, and photonics industry experienced an 11% year-on-year growth in new robot orders.

Useful robotics applications for the electronics industries include assembly of electronics, automated inspections, packing, and soldering.

6. Metals

Like many industries, the metals industry has experienced a significant blow due to the impacts of the 2020 global pandemic. With metal consumption already declining before the Covid-19 virus appeared, companies in the metals industry have had to work hard to find new ways to operate or risk disappearing completely.

Despite this difficulty — or perhaps even because of it — companies in the metals industry have begun to use more robots in their operations.

This past year, the metals industry experienced a 7% year-on-year growth in new robot orders. The rate is clearly smaller than the other industries on this list. Even so, the metals industry is one of the top growth industries for robotics.

Robot applications employed in the metals industry include surface finishing, material preparation, and machining.

If your industry is on this list, it’s worth taking note. Likely, your competitors are already employing robots and you would be wise to consider doing the same.

However, whatever industry you are in, robotics can help you to improve and evolve your operations to respond to changes in the market.

What industry do you operate in? Tell us in the comments below or join the discussion on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or in the RoboDK Forum.

The post Top 6 Robotics Industries That Are Growing in 2021 appeared first on RoboDK blog.