Could you stand to lose a few pounds? Sorry! Yes, that’s a personal question, but it’s one that an overwhelming majority of people would probably answer in the affirmative. As processed foods overwhelm grocery store shelves and free time dwindles, forcing many to choose between exercise and mindless entertainment, the battle of the bulge has become a fight that many Americans wage daily.
Lately, though, scientific advancements have seemingly given many people an answer to prayer: an easy, almost magical weight loss tool in the form of a monthly shot. Have you noticed the number of celebrities sporting thinner bodies? These new weight loss drugs, prohibitively costly for many, are easily available to the well-to-do.
This new wave of weight loss drugs certainly appears to be the next big thing in the ongoing fight against obesity. Over time, more drugs are likely to become available, and the current medicines will hopefully become affordable to all. Perhaps they’ll even invent a version that doesn’t require shots.
Or have they already? Recent reports indicate that pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly has a weight loss pill in trials that may soon be manufactured at a new $6 billion manufacturing plant in Alabama. In a recent Manufacturing Dive article, author Nathan Owens reports that “Eli Lilly announced plans to invest more than $6 billion to build a manufacturing plant in Huntsville, Alabama, focused on weight loss medications and other pharmaceutical ingredients.”
According to Owens, “[t]he site will manufacture orforglipron, Lilly’s first oral, small molecule GLP-1 receptor agonist, which the company expects to submit to regulatory agencies by the end of this year.” The plant would represent “the third of four planned U.S. manufacturing sites the pharmaceutical giant has unveiled this year, set to bring 450 factory jobs to the Huntsville area.”
Those jobs would include “engineers, scientists, operations personnel and lab technicians.” Lilly officials have indicated that the Huntsville site was chosen, in part, “due to its proximity to the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, a campus that supports workforce training and research.”
Skilled workers will be in high demand, since Lilly plans to “leverage ‘state-of-the-art’ technologies at the plant, including machine learning, artificial intelligence, advanced data analytics and digital automation, to ‘streamline’ operations and ensure a safe supply of medicines.”
Unfortunately, these workers may be difficult to find, given the ongoing skilled labor shortage that has plagued manufacturers for decades now. Lilly will need to work closely with local industry and educational institutions to ensure a steady stream of talent for its advanced manufacturing facility.
When it comes to training the next generation of advanced manufacturing workers, educators and industry partners alike would do well to partner with experts in technical training, such as DAC Worldwide.
For example, pharmaceutical manufacturers like Lilly could benefit from DAC Worldwide’s Smart Process Plant Training System (603-SP), a fully-functional, industrial-quality fluid process system that provides hands-on training in the measurement and control of five of the most common process variables: level, pressure, temperature, flow, and pH.
The system groups these process control elements into one complete piping system, which allows it to teach multiple configurations of flow loops, controls, and communications. The system incorporates both new and legacy technologies so that users are prepared for anything they might encounter on the job. These technologies work together to form a 3-level communication architecture:
- Device Level: Smart sensors monitor Level, Flow, Temperature, Pressure, and pH. They are connected via either IO-Link and Ethernet communication or HART communication.
- Control Level: A DCS and various PLCs and PIDs allow for operation and control of the system’s components.
- Enterprise Level: The DCS software provides Supervisory Control with data analytics for monitoring smart production, smart maintenance, etc.
The Smart Process Plant uses a Distributed Control System (DCS) that features Supervisory Control software. This software is Rockwell Automation’s PlantPAx, and it acts as the backbone of the system. It gathers and organizes data and creates dashboards that represent the real-time status of the processes being carried out by the system.
The Smart Process Plant Training System features a wide variety of common, industrial-quality components and instruments to provide learners with a realistic training experience that will build skills that translate easily to the workplace. The Smart Process Plant also includes multiple experiments, which simulate both continuous and batch process control loops that are widely used in many process industries. These experiments include:
- Basic and Advanced Bioreactor Applications
- Clean-In-Place (CIP) Skid Application
- Boiler Drum Level Application
- Wastewater Treatment Application
With these experiments, learners will explore a wide variety of fundamental process control topics, including: temperature, level, flow, pressure, and pH ratio control; agitation; sequence control; continuous control; 3-element control; feed forward/cascade control; and pump lead/lag demand. The Smart Process Plant Training System is only one of DAC Worldwide’s many process control and instrumentation training systems. Visit DAC Worldwide online to learn more about its many other training systems, as well as advanced chemical engineering training systems from its partner, Pignat SAS!
