PEAK – Protecting Compliant & Validated Environments

PEAK has a strong presence in the Biopharma sector, and is relied upon not only by the Facility and Maintenance teams, but also plays a role for the microbiologists and the compliant environments they operate in.

Issue

The PEAK Platform is currently embedded in a large Biopharma plant, responsible for some of the globe’s leading medicines which is driving to a future where disease is in the past. PEAK detected an issue with an Air Handling Unit (AHU) that was supplying an area of the production facility that has strict requirements for temperature and humidity. The unit was supplying air at 6 degrees above the setpoint, even though the chilled valve was fully open. It also detected that the zone temperature was 3.5 degrees above the required setpoint. No alarms had been raised within the area, as the breach point had not been hit, but this was only due to the mild ambient temperatures that were assisting the cooling process. If this continued, the cell culture area could have reached non-compliance resulting in the potential loss of valuable biomedicine product.

Action

An Action was raised in PEAK detailing where and what to check. The Maintenance Technician assigned discovered a blockage in the strainer before the AHU chilled water coil which was restricting the water flow.

Issue Identified

Peak identified the issue with the supply air temperature and the chilled water valve

Issue Rectified

Issue rectified onsite. Chilled water valve modulating and supply air temperature operating at setpoint

Issue Result

Zone conditions returning to setpoint after fix

Result

Had PEAK not identified this issue, the maintenance technicians would have relied on setpoint alarms – and the zone would have become non-compliant.

Predictive Maintenance regimes are normally developed based on breakdowns, and scheduling inspections based on the average failure times and other patterns that lead to the failure. However, with PEAK, the FDD software uses real-time data to diagnose operational non-compliances and then our technical customer success team engage with the onsite FM team to resolve the issues to resolve it before a breakdown occurs.