Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and Packing Sourcer (PMPS) is a specialist journal designed to provide worldwide coverage of a range of topics relating to the pharmaceutical manufacturing and packaging sector.

In the Winter 2012 issue we discuss the 42 Technology Sticky Web technology which allows high speed printing of pharmaceutical powders.

Sticky web is a novel precision powder dispensing technology capable of accurately ‘printing’ 0.1 to 100mg of powdered active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) with a variety of particle size distributions onto edible or inert adhesive webs or surfaces.  Accuracies are typically better than around 2.5 per cent and the approach can deliver commercial manufacturing speeds up to 600,000 doses per hour. The article looks at how the technology was first discovered, its promise and its progress towards commercialisation.

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The complete issue can be viewed on Samedan Ltd website.

Three engineers from 42 Technology have successfully pitched their skills in lateral thinking and their wits to win a one-off TV quiz that was broadcast on Monday 12 December.  Simon Jelley, Bruce Lin and John Loveluck (shown from left to right) were named as BBC Four’s ‘Only Connect’ Wall Night Winners 2011 and handed their trophy by show presenter Victoria Coren.

42 Technology, competing as The Technologists, was one of eight teams specially selected from the last five series of ‘Only Connect’ to compete in a single tournament of Connecting Wall.  The game involves rearranging a board of 16 apparently random words into four rows of connected items against the clock.

In the final round they were faced with 16 three or four letter abbreviations including PSX, VCS, NES and SMS, which they correctly identified as acronyms for home gaming consoles.

Chris Walters, head of consumer business development, was recently invited to present details of 42 Technology’s disruptive aerosol technology at the UK industry’s flagship event: the British Aerosol Manufacturers’ Association forum (20/21 October, Manchester).

The patented approach – one of the most promising novel technologies to be showcased – will enable manufacturers to produce a new generation of propellant-free, high performance aerosols.  Droplet size is maintained until the can contents are completely emptied, while products are smaller, lighter and have easier to recycle ‘packaging’.

For further information on the development opportunities for this new approach please email answers@42technology.com or read our recent news announcement.

James Oliver has joined 42 Technology as a graduate mechanical engineer to further strengthen our mechanical engineering team. He is taking an active role with 42 Technology’s innovation process group, helping generate new technology and product concepts for clients.

His previous industry experience includes placements with global engineering consultancy Ricardo, at one of its specialist technical centres and with an industrial design practice.

“We are all really pleased to welcome James to 42 Technology and expect him to make a significant contribution to our business over the coming weeks and months. He is clearly a skilled and practical mechanical engineer but also hugely passionate about automotive engineering and electronics technology which will stand him in good stead for his consultancy career,” said Howard Biddle, managing director of 42 Technology.

James graduated earlier this year with a MEng (2:1) in mechanical engineering from University of Bristol and during his four year course also secured two university project prizes. In his spare time he plays the drums in a number of bands, is a keen motorcyclist and a motorsport fan who regularly attends Formula One and Le Mans race events.

Answering questions like this, three engineers from St. Ives consulting firm 42 Technology successfully pitched their wits and skills in lateral thinking against a team of amateur runners to make it through to the quarter finals of BBC Four’s ‘Only Connect’ quiz show. Simon Jelley, Bruce Lin and John Loveluck, competing as The Technologists, beat The Joggers and are next due to appear on Monday 31 October at 8.30pm.

‘Only Connect,’ described by presenter Victoria Coren as “the hardest quiz on TV,” calls on participants to make connections between apparently unconnected things. The answer to the earlier question? They all have eight legs.

Team member Sue Smith – finance manager at 42 Technology and a coach for St Ives Swimming Club – previously hated running but is now a convert.

“I was never able to run continuously for more than a minute but with the team’s encouragement and a few training sessions I completed the 1.7 mile course. I plan to keep training and my 2012 goal is to match the rest of the team.”

In this recent article published in Solar magazine, we discuss the pressure for cost reduction and how analytical modelling helped achieve significant cost reductions in Circadian’s concentrating photovoltaic (PV) solar technology.

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This article first appeared in Solar – a PV management magazine. Edition 6 2011. Copyright Angel Business Communications. Reproduced with permission.

The Cenex 4^th annual Low Carbon Vehicle Event is beng held on 7th and 8th September at Rockingham Motor Speedway, Corby.

The Energy Event is being held on the 13th and 14th September at NEC Birmingham.

Please contact Bruce Lin by emailing answers@42technology.com if you plan to go and would like to meet up.

Ian Cleathero and Steve Woodall will both actively contribute towards existing major projects, as well as helping identify new opportunities to develop novel medical devices, instrumentation and other products and processes for the fast-growing healthcare market.

Ian Cleathero (left) joins from Bespak Injectables, where he was technical director responsible for the development of several novel drug delivery devices including the world’s first commercial needle-free injector with electronic dosing. He has a background in injection moulding and design for manufacture; experience spanning medical devices, automotive, and consumer products; and is an appointed national expert on an ISO technical committee for medical device design. His earlier career included leading the polymers practice at European R&D consultancy Pera and engineering management roles in the automotive sector. Away from the office, Ian plays rugby for Melton Mowbray RFC Nomads and rides a Triumph Daytona 955 motorbike.

Steve Woodall (right) is a physicist and brings over 20 years’ experience in the development of advanced instrumentation and systems for use in pharmaceutical and diagnostics R&D laboratories. He spent six years with proteomics company NextGen Sciences leading the development team for a fully automated protein manufacturing system and covering all aspects of hardware and software development through to installation and customer training. He has also held product management and consulting roles with The Automation Partnership, Fisons Instruments and PA Technology. He started his industrial engineering career in defence electronics with Thorn EMI.

“Steve and Ian will significantly strengthen our dedicated in-house team and will be a real asset to many of our clients, not just in healthcare. They are both very skilled in running complex development projects, as well as being experts in combining novel science with sophisticated engineering which is essential in generating market-winners for the healthcare sector.”

Howard Biddle, managing director at 42 Technology.

42 Technology works with some of the world’s leading medical device, diagnostics and pharmaceutical companies to help design, develop and bring to market professional and consumer medical products.

Recent announcements include: working with FIND, the Geneva-based non-profit organisation on significantly improving the sensitivity of a new TB diagnostic and developing a novel arthroscopic toolset for biomedical company Tigenix. 42 Technology has also recently been awarded ISO 13485:2003 certification for the design and development of medical devices which enables faster regulatory compliance and is helping bring innovative new products to market at lower cost.

Platform Engineering

The Conventional View

Platform engineering can be a powerful approach to technology management. A platform includes a family of key technologies or product attributes which are common across an organisation’s product portfolio. Technologies are identified, developed and validated at a platform level before being made available company wide. The cost and risk of new product development is then improved by integrating ready-proven technologies from the various platforms.

Organisations typically have a broad scope of activity and a wide product range, with each product delivering a different mix of benefits, functionality and performance. The technology platforms embody real technology modules that collectively deliver this product functionality.

“The key to managing the product innovation and risk lies in explicit management of the underlying platforms.”

In the diagram above, for example, the products may have a well proven heat exchanger comprising a hollow stainless steel coil through which water passes. Different boiler capacities are then achieved simply by specifying a longer coil length.

This is the conventional view of platform engineering applied to product management and new product introduction. However, there are a number of tools and approaches that support platform evolution.

Augmenting Platform Management

Approach 1: Technology Roadmapping

Technology roadmaps can be used to ensure that innovation and technology development is aligned with consumer needs, external threats such as policy changes and competitor technology developments which erode market share. The roadmap provides a mechanism to clearly define short term projects and investments while also mapping out the shape and direction of longer term development activities.

The process to establish a roadmap typically builds on input from multiple stakeholders, both technical and commercial. The activities may include:

• Identifying technology and performance trends and levels of maturity
• Identifying boundaries of current performance
• Identifying market demands for future performance and the gaps to be spanned
• Predicting feasible and likely evolution and identifying technology drivers that might shape future platform performance
• Validating new technologies and deciding the extent and timing to bring them online

Technology roadmaps ensure that technology projects are aligned with customer needs and business priorities -as well as other external factors-, thereby reducing risk and cost while improving potential return on investment. Putting a roadmap in the hands of the platform managers ensures that their development projects are kept aligned with these priorities and with regular reviews the roadmap can be redirected as market and business needs evolve. This helps to ensure that technologies are developed which give the business a real competitive advantage.

Approach 2: Technology Scouting

Another augmentation of platform thinking uses technology scouting as a significant enabler of innovation. This opens up the global space of technology opportunities as a resource for the platforms and enables companies to balance innovation opportunity and technology risk.

“It is important to identify functional needs to scout for technologies.”

Technology scouting is a process of identifying both emerging and existing technologies in the wider world. Technologies may come from universities, individual inventors or companies in other industry sectors. There are numerous tools available to carry out technology scouting, not least searching of patent databases and academic literature, as well as simply networking and attending relevant conferences in fields of interest. The difficulty is, of course, knowing what to look for, which is where the platform owners step in.

Platform owners can identify their aspirations for new performance and identify gaps and ceilings in capability. These requirements can be used to drive directed technology searches as well as wider scanning. The task now becomes more focussed on steering a new technology opportunity towards its use in a platform. Technologies can be identified, characterised, proven and tested, and then, as risk is eliminated, be made part of the platform and ready for use in new product developments.

Conclusion

Platform engineering is a compelling technique for managing technology and product development cost and risk. We have shown how platform engineering can be further augmented.

• A technology roadmap can be used to create a consensus about the maturity of technologies within a platform, identifying boundaries and future evolution while managing future risk and obsolescence.
• Technology scouting enables access to innovations from a global range of external opportunities. Platform strategies set the direction for technology scouting. The new technologies can be assessed and the risk managed before incorporation into a platform and ultimately the range of products.

If you would like to discuss how platform engineering could enhance your technology management processes then contact Chris Walters or Charles Boulton at answers@42technology.com.