The promise of bioengineering to improve millions of lives will require efficient production and supply chain logistics systems that can manufacture and deliver millions of high quality, low cost products to patients. The objective of this project is to study how industrial engineering and operations research (IEOR) tools for designing such systems can be applied to biomanufacturing, and to establish a research agenda so that current IEOR tools can be modified, and new tools can be developed, to improve bioproduction systems efficiency. The project goal is to develop a fundamental understanding of biomanufacturing by exploring how differences in production scalability, cross-contamination, regulation, and the therapeutic characteristics of biologics impact production planning, capacity expansion planning and analysis, quality control, supply chain optimization, production economics, and organization structure.
Within other high-tech industries, IEOR tools such as simulation, scheduling and production control, capacity planning and production economics, quality control, and supply chain optimization have helped to dramatically increase efficiency. The potential exists to impact the biopharmaceutical industry in the same way. However, this is a very different industry, with its own set of criteria, constraints, and issues that must be understood and quantified. A clear articulation of these issues and potential impact of IEOR technology on the biopharmaceutical industry will help establish a research agenda in this area. This project will include a workshop with both industrial and academic participation as well as form the basis for a new graduate course on logistics and production systems for biomanufacturing. In addition, best practices benchmarking using performance metrics for productivity, speed, flexibility and quality will be initiated.
