The Siemens technology group and Sartorius Stedim Biotech (SSB), a leading international supplier for the biopharmaceutical industry, have agreed on long-term cooperation in the area of automation. This agreement provides that Sartorius Stedim Biotech will preferably use Siemens automation technologies, which will include industrial PCs, the S7-1500 software controller, the TIA Portal and the SCADA system Simatic WinCC, among others. These hardware and software components will be employed in many products and solutions that SSB offers its customers for the development and manufacture of biopharmaceuticals, such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.

Sartorius Stedim Biotech has already been using established Siemens automation solutions for process control in its large-scale bioreactor and filtration systems for quite some time. To standardize its own product portfolio even further, SSB has decided to introduce a new, configurable automation system for its range of systems. Under the agreement recently concluded, cooperation between the two companies will therefore be extended to further Sartorius Stedim Biotech products. These will be successively equipped with Siemens automated solutions in the coming months and can thus be integrated into process control systems, such as Simatic PCS 7 and Simatic Batch. Essentially, such SSB products are single-use bioreactors of the BIOSTAT® STR series, various filtration systems and the FlexAct® system. The latter is a flexible module that is used to control many different process steps within biopharmaceutical production.

"By introducing this new automation platform and further standardizing our products, we are making it easy for our customers to integrate their systems into higher-level automation solutions, such as SCADA, MES or ERP. At the same time, we are enabling them to achieve easier scalability of processes ranging from lab scale to commercial-scale production," explained Dr. Oscar-Werner Reif, Chief Technology Officer at Sartorius Stedim Biotech. "We have found an ideal partner in Siemens as one of the leading companies in automation," continued Dr. Reif.

Eckard Eberle, CEO of the Siemens Process Automation business unit, commented: "We are happy to support Sartorius Stedim Biotech with our unique and cohesive portfolio consisting of hardware, software and service throughout the entire system life cycle. Based on our cooperation, users in the biopharmaceutical industry stand to benefit from higher efficiency, quality and flexibility, as well as faster time to market."

During this year’s ACHEMA trade show that will be taking place from June 11 to June 15, 2018, in Frankfurt, Germany, Siemens and Sartorius Stedim Biotech will be jointly presenting the FlexAct module, a first product based on the new automation platform. Visitors and all others interested are cordially invited to obtain first-hand information at the Siemens AG booth in Hall 11/C3. A presentation on this product will be held in German on June 12 at 1:30 p.m. and in English on June 13 at 1:00 p.m. and on June 14 at 2:00 p.m.