What comes to mind when you think about Indiana? Fields of corn? The Indy 500? If educational institutions and industry partners have their way, you might soon be adding another thing to that list: biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

According to a recent Inside INdiana Business article, author Alex Brown notes that the federal Economic Development Administration has designated Indiana consortium Heartland BioWorks as “a regional technology and innovation hub.”

As such, Heartland BioWorks “has established BioTrain, a training institute designed to prepare talent for entry-level biomanufacturing roles.” The overall goal is to “help build a talent pipeline in biopharmaceutical manufacturing.”

How important is it to increase the number of skilled workers in biomanufacturing? According to Vince Wong, CEO of Indianapolis-based BioCrossroads, the sector needs “about 2,400 to 3,700 employees in biopharma manufacturing every year for the next 10 years.”

To meet such a huge demand for biomanufacturing workers, companies and educational institutions must work together “to develop an infrastructure of training to make sure that we have have a robust workforce to meet that.”

That’s why BioTrain “aims to address the specific skills and qualifications needed to tackle workforce shortages in the life sciences.” In Indiana, what that looks like is a partnership with “BioCrossroads, Purdue University, and Ivy Tech Community College,” among others.

The BioTrain facility “will feature a combination of classroom and hands-on training on state-of-the art equipment that will allow participants to earn stackable credentials that will help them earn entry-level biomanufacturing roles that can feed into existing higher credentials for technician, engineer, or scientist positions.”

The facility will be able to train “college students, industry workers looking to upskill, as well as those coming from other industries.” Users will have access to some of the best training equipment and curriculum available, such as 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!