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BMS and EMS Solutions

Control and monitoring of storage and production environments has become an important issue within the Pharmaceutical Industry. The FDA, EMEA and other regulatory bodies require accurate measurement and storage of room parameters and, if the storage medium is electronic, the methods used must comply with FDA 21 CFR Part 11.

The FDA also states in its 21 CFR part 203.32 that:

“Manufacturers; authorised distributors of record and their representatives shall store and handle all drug samples under conditions that will maintain their stability, integrity and effectiveness and ensure that the drug samples are free of contamination, deterioration, and adulteration.”

Other FDA rules related to environmental control and monitoring include:

  • 211.42: Design and construction features (section 10)
  • 211.46: Ventilation, air filtration, air heating and cooling
  • 211.142: Warehousing procedures (section b)
  • 820.70: Production and process controls
  • ICH Q7A Good Manufacturing Practice Guidance for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (sections 4.2 and 10)

Why Eurotherm?

The Eurotherm BMS/EMS system is designed to satisfy the requirements of regulatory bodies including FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and it offers:

  • Scalable from a single room to a plant wide solution
  • Simplifies validation using flexible and modular standard functions
  • Accurate and effective control of HVAC systems and other related equipment
  • Centralized and/or remote control of facilities and equipment
  • Real time Monitoring of BMS performance
  • Intelligent alarm capability for early warning of process deviations
  • Corrective strategies when stability factors go outside the specification
  • Secure management and storage of environmental data and audit trails
  • Predictive maintenance planning
  • Energy management

Scalable BMS/EMS Solutions from Eurotherm

Eurotherm Building Management Systems provide control, monitoring, recording and alarming of a range of facilities within a plant including:

  • Production facilities including Aseptic areas
  • Laboratory facilities
  • Warehouse facilities
  • Cold storage facilities
  • Environmental Chambers
  • Office facilities
  • Fire and alarm security systems
  • Water purification systems

Not all existing BMS systems offer a logging facility and, for these systems an independent monitoring system, EMS, will be needed. Typically an EMS will provide independent monitoring and logging of the critical environmental parameters for GMP, GLP and GDP facilities.

Flexible and Modular BMS/EMS Solution

Eurotherm BMS/EMS Standard Modules

Eurotherm BMS/EMS solutions are modular and scalable. They offer all the functionality required to control, monitor, record and alarm, for a single room to a plant wide application.

They are ideal for

  • Implementing a new system
  • Enhancing existing systems
  • EMS for an existing BMS

It offers the options for:

  • Centralised BMS/EMS
  • Network of local standalone BMS/EMS units
  • Combination of centraliZed and local systems to increase availability and ease of use

Data Logging and Audit Trail Designed to Satisfy FDA 21 CFR Part 11

Data Logging

Data logging is a key requirement for BMS/EMS systems. FDA 21 CFR Part 11 requires that logged data will be tamper proof and will include critical environmental parameters

(temperature, humidity, pressure, particulate sizes, etc), with audit trails including:

  • Accurate time and date stamps
  • Alarms and events
  • User actions and details (e.g. setpoint changes)
  • User notes
  • Electronic Signatures
  • Login/Logout

Eurotherm’s BMS/EMS systems log plant data to tamper proof files and SQL relational databases. Data logging can be offered as:

  • Local logging (Tamper proof file)
  • Central logging (SQL database)
  • Local and central logging (Tamper proof files and SQL database)

The availability of logged data can be significantly increased by the local and central logging option. This allows data collection in multiple devices to further protect vital plant data.

Typically a BMS/EMS system comprises of a number of distributed units where each unit has its own internal clock. Time synchronisation is included to ensure accurate time and date stamps, as required by FDA 21 CFR Part 11, to a known clock source.

The BMS/EMS system offers provisions for electronically copying data for archive and export facility to common packages (e.g. Excel, Word, PDF, etc.) for viewing of secure records in human readable format. Other features of the system include:

  • Power and network recovery automatic procedures
  • FTP server to put the data on a central server
  • Scheduled transfers

The system can be configured to provide logging for non-critical parameters including:

  • System events
  • Equipment failure
  • Equipment performance and maintenance
  • Energy usage

Alarms and Events Reporting

An important feature of the BMS/EMS system is its Alarms and Events functionality. All alarms and events are time stamped and logged for long term retention and validation to FDA 21 CFR Part 11. Individual plant data can be configured to have one or a combination of the following alarms:

  • Absolute alarms
  • Deviation alarms
  • Rate of Change alarms
  • Delayed alarms
  • Excursion alarms

The system can be configured to provide other alarms including;

  • Sensor break
  • Equipment failures
  • Network failure
  • Maintenance and calibration alarm

Alarms can be configured as critical, non-critical or as an Event. Critical alarms will require manual acknowledgement and non-critical will be auto-acknowledged. Alarm selection and setpoint settings are available to the users with the appropriate access level and critical alarms can be configured to require an Electronic Signature for changes. Alarm acknowledgement and all changes to alarm settings are automatically logged as required by FDA 21 CFR part 11. All alarms and events are reported through local, central, and remote HMI panels. They are displayed in the Alarm Summary and Alarm History pages which provide a sort facility for the information. Alarms can be grouped by their criticality and function to ensure individual alarms can be quickly accessed.

Other features of the BMS/EMS alarm system include:

  • Audible alarm notification
  • Notification of alarm conditions to designated users on a designated telephone number
  • Local printing of alarms and events

Easy to Use, Comprehensive Reporting

Review and Reporting

The BMS/EMS system provides a comprehensive review and reporting system. The system offers two methods for collecting data:

  • Local data collection – Data collected locally in a secure format and archived centrally in a filing system
  • Central data collection – Data collected in a central historical SQL relational database

These methods may be combined and, in both cases, the system provides the facility to create reports for individual rooms. A number of standard report templates are provided along with the facility for users to create their own reports.

Information can be automatically transferred and accessed from standard Microsoft® Office packages.

  • Realtime and historical trends
  • Multiple data plots
  • Search by batch or by room
  • Batch trend analysis
  • “Golden Batch” analysis
  • Standard and custom SQL queries
  • Direct insertion to Excel™, Word™
  • Quick report generation with standard templates

Easy to Operate at every Level

Security Manager

Security Manager offers significant operation cost savings and ease of use by allowing maintenance of user accounts and passwords from one or multiple locations. If a user needs to change their password they can do so on a local instrument or PC and this will be automatically distributed across all systems to which they have access.

  • A common security tool across multiple product ranges
  • Change in one place, deploy to many
  • Support for multiple security zones
  • Built-in audit trail for FDA 21 CFR Part 11 validation
  • Automatic version control
  • Support for electronic signatures

Maintenance and Calibration

Maintenance is an essential part of any BMS/EMS system. Maintenance information on various elements of the system (e.g. last calibration date, calibration due date, last maintenance date, maintenance due date) is shown on multiple displays throughout the system. The system can provide warnings if calibration/maintenance dates for individual equipment are approaching and/or exceeded.

Access permission can be given to individual users to select maintenance modes for the following:

  • Sensors
  • Equipment (e.g. pumps, motors, valves)

Maintenance mode can also be selected for a given area e.g. a room or a zone of the plant. While in maintenance mode the individual equipment or area will be clearly identified on the display using colour and text. The system can be set to suppress alarms and stop logging parameters for associated equipment at this time.

Selection and the de-selection of the maintenance mode will be logged as an event in the audit trail.

Easy to use calibration tools are included in the system for use during maintenance mode. Selection and de-selection of the calibration mode is logged in the audit trail.

Total Lifecycle Support

Remote Alarm Notification

Nominated users can be quickly notified of alarm conditions via the telephone system.

The system offers:

  • Real-time alarm notification triggered from the plant system
  • Ensured the delivery of the messages
  • Easy to configure tools
  • Login facilities and security patterns
  • Redundancy options

Remote Monitoring

Remote users, including off-site, can access plant information via a secure web portal.

  • Remote real-time data visualisation
  • Multi language facilities
  • Support for multiple windows
  • Integrated information from diverse data sources

Services

Services need to be provided from the beginning of the project, though the project development and commissioning, and for the lifetime of the system.

Eurotherm offers a complete range of services such as:

  • Expertise to assist with the User Requirement Specification
  • Project, Application and Validation engineering
  • Commissioning (e.g. calibration) and qualification engineering
  • Training courses covering products, control theory, validation etc.
  • Helpdesk and on call services
  • Product services

Qualification/Validation

BMS/EMS

A key requirement for BMS/EMS solutions is validation. Where environmental conditions (e.g. temperature, humidity, differential pressure, air flow, sterility, containment) have a direct impact on product purity, safety, quality or efficacy they need to be monitored against predetermined limits and logged. In this case the BMS/EMS system used for collecting and logging the data needs to be validated. According to ISPE guidelines, it is good practice to monitor the performance of equipment such as fans, coil and control components, but it is not a regulatory requirement.

Documentation

Validation documentation needs to be provided through the cycle of the BMS/EMS system. Eurotherm can offer a range of documentation services following ISPE GAMP5 guidelines and in accordance with customer requirements:

  • User Requirement Specification
  • Functional Specification
  • Design Specification
  • Hardware Testing
  • Code Review
  • Factory Acceptance Test
  • Installation Qualification
  • Operational Qualification
  • Periodic review

Mean Kinetic Temperature (MKT) (on the warehouse mapping only)

Calculation

Measurement and recording of temperatures is vital to the storage of perishable goods, but there is more than one way to record an average. The ICH defines the mean kinetic temperature as being “A single derived temperature that, if maintained over a defined period of time, affords the same thermal challenge to a drug substance or drug product as would be experienced over a range of both higher and lower temperatures for an equivalent defined period”.

MKT expresses the cumulative thermal stress experienced by a product at varying temperatures during storage and distribution. It differs from other means (such as a simple numerical average or arithmetic mean) in that higher temperatures are given greater weight in computing the average, recognising the accelerated rate of thermal degradation of materials at higher temperatures.

Eurotherm minimizes the implementation and operation cost of providing MKT data by making all of the above methods as integral part of our solution with:

  • A choice of stability testing period (hourly / daily /weekly)
  • A choice of sampling frequency (from 1 minute to 1 hour)
  • Option to remove individual probes from the calculation (e.g. during a calibration process)
  • Corrective action in case stability is out of specification
  • Secure and low cost custom reporting

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