-
ABOUT USAffiliated to SSY Group Limited, Hebei Guangxiang Technology Co., Ltd., is a high-tech enterprise specializing in drug research and technology development.
-
INNOVATIONSSY Group Limited has built a relatively perfect scientific research and innovation system with the synergy between “industry, academia, research and application” based on multi-disciplinary integration and multi-directional combination.
-
SUBORDINATEThe group has decided to establish research institutes in its subsidiaries, Hebei Ghuangxiang Drug Research Institute, Jiangsu Best Medical Material Research Institute, and Hebei Hanlin Biological Research Institute.
-
RECRUITWe actively establish a joint talent cultivation mechanism between schools and enterprises, and currently have over 500 high-level talents in various fields such as drug research, analysis, and clinical practice.
-
CONTACTWe will continue to strengthen innovation-driven development, vigorously promote the integration of production and research, constantly improve the five domains: new drugs, biological drugs, traditional Chinese medicine, generic drugs and APIs.
The Digital Journey of a Bag of Intravenous Fluids
Category:
Time：2023-05-12
Shijiazhuang Sihua Pharmaceutical Group is a leading enterprise in China’s large-volume parenteral solutions industry. In recent years, Shijiazhuang Sihua has comprehensively upgraded its production equipment for large-volume parenteral solutions and adopted digital technologies, significantly enhancing the company’s core competitiveness. Last December, the company’s proposed project on digital R&D and design of pharmaceutical products was included in the 2022 List of Outstanding Smart Manufacturing Scenarios released by four government departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission.
Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical Group’s largest automated three-dimensional warehouse boasts 60,000 storage locations. Eighteen aisles divide the three-dimensional warehouse into 36 rows, and each row is further subdivided into 90 columns arranged over 19 levels. Photo by Ma Yanming, reporter of Hebei Daily.
In the AI+New Drug R&D Studio at Shijiazhuang No.4 Pharmaceutical, Li Yuan, Deputy Director of the Innovation Department, is conducting high-throughput virtual screening of new compounds. Photo by Ma Yanming, reporter of Hebei Daily.
Hebei Daily reporter Ma Yanming
Editor’s Note
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China stated, “We must accelerate the development of the digital economy and promote the deep integration of the digital economy with the real economy.”
Industrial digitalization serves as the physical foundation of the digital economy. Hebei Province, a major hub for traditional industries, has great potential in promoting the deep integration of the internet, big data, artificial intelligence, and the real economy. Starting today, the Hebei Daily will publish a series of reports titled “On-the-Ground Investigation: Industrial Digitalization.” Journalists will venture into the frontlines of traditional industries such as pharmaceuticals, steel, and chemicals to conduct in-depth investigations, share stories of enterprises’ digital transformation, and vividly showcase the ongoing efforts to accelerate the development of a digitally empowered Hebei Province. Stay tuned!
Large-volume injections, commonly known as large infusions, typically refer to sterile preparations in liquid form with a volume of 50 milliliters or more that are administered directly into the body via intravenous drip. They are widely used in clinical practice.
Shijiazhuang Sihua Pharmaceutical Group is a leading enterprise in China’s large-volume parenteral solutions industry. In recent years, Shijiazhuang Sihua has comprehensively upgraded its production equipment for large-volume parenteral solutions and adopted digital technologies, significantly enhancing the company’s core competitiveness. Last December, the company’s digitally-driven product R&D and design project was included on the list of outstanding smart manufacturing scenarios for 2022, released jointly by four government departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission.
Recently, a reporter visited Shijiazhuang No.4 Pharmaceutical for an interview and engaged in in-depth conversations with R&D and production staff at multiple workstations, gaining firsthand experience of the digital journey of a bag of intravenous solution—from its origin in the production process all the way to its delivery to the end customer.
■ New drug development: AI-powered, significantly boosting efficiency
April 22, Saturday, Building A4, Shijiazhuang Sihua Pharmaceutical Research Institute.
Before coming to the AI+New Drug R&D Studio, the reporter had imagined that the workspace would be filled with high-end instruments as well as various test tubes and reagents. But when the reporter met Li Yuan, Deputy Director of the Innovation Department at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Research, she found herself surrounded by just three computers and a few specialized books on drug design.
“The computer on the left is connected to the server in the first-floor data center. When conducting high-throughput virtual screening, its 96 CPUs work together,” Li Yuan explained in response to the reporter’s question. She added that when it comes to new drug development, computers are far more efficient than humans.
Li Yuan holds a PhD from Jilin University. Since joining Shijiazhuang No.4 Pharmaceutical in 2021, she has been working to establish a virtual screening and artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery platform, leveraging big data to accelerate drug development. In 2022, the platform was completed, and Li Yuan began screening and designing a new molecular entity compound intended for the treatment of diabetes, kidney disease, and hypertension. “Thanks to virtual screening technology, we’ve already identified over 100 novel compounds from a library containing hundreds of millions of compounds. In the past, accomplishing this task would have taken at least two to three years,” said Li Yuan. She added that by harnessing big data, previously daunting tasks—such as drug structure design, target identification and validation, and lead compound optimization—have become considerably easier.
In the field of drug development, there has long been a saying that it takes ten years and one billion U.S. dollars to bring a new drug to market—and the success rate for developing new drugs is extremely low. The application of AI technology will greatly enhance the efficiency of innovative drug research and development.
Based on computational chemistry as its theoretical foundation, high-performance computer clusters as its hardware infrastructure, and computer-aided drug design and artificial intelligence algorithms as its software basis, Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical has established a virtual screening and AI-driven drug discovery platform that encompasses a library of small-molecule compounds with structural diversity numbering in the tens of billions. Utilizing artificial intelligence and deep-learning algorithms, this platform can precisely optimize the properties of compounds—including their absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity—in the human body.
At 5 p.m., Li Yuan arrived at the physicochemical laboratory in the pilot-scale building to conduct testing on small-scale samples. She said, “Previously, many screening processes that relied heavily on physicochemical experiments have now been replaced by computers, making our work more targeted and efficient.”
■ Preparation of pharmaceutical solutions: Closed-loop delivery—“online” is a high-frequency term.
On the morning of April 23, standing in the corridor of the intravenous solution centralized preparation center in Workshop 208, I could see, through the glass, a network of crisscrossing delivery pipelines and towering solution preparation tanks.
“Today, the compounding center prepared a total of 350 tons of pharmaceutical solutions, mainly glucose injection and sodium chloride injection,” said Liu Baocun, assistant director of the compounding center. On average, the compounding center prepares 25 batches of pharmaceutical solutions each day for the six production lines in Workshop 208.
Liu Baocun introduced that the compounding center can be regarded as the “heart” of Workshop 208, with its equipment operating continuously throughout the year. Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical has introduced a Swiss powder conveying system, featuring the world’s most advanced enclosed conveying and online weighing systems, all fully automated and computer-controlled. The ingredient preparation stages for multiple production lines are centrally located in a single compounding unit, which uniformly supplies the prepared infusion solutions to each production line. This setup minimizes errors during the compounding process and reduces material contamination, thereby significantly improving the yield of finished products.
Preparing pharmaceutical solutions is inseparable from high-quality water. Liu Bao-cun said that Shijiazhuang No.4 Pharmaceutical has adopted a two-stage reverse osmosis filtration technology and a highly efficient, thermally pressurized, energy-saving distillation technology, enabling automatic online monitoring of total organic carbon, temperature, and conductivity, as well as automatic recording, control, and flow-rate adjustment. After rigorous quality control, the water used in large-volume parenteral products meets the European Pharmacopoeia standards for indicators such as electrical conductivity and total organic carbon.
■ Quality Control: Automatic data transfer and automatic judgment
For pharmaceutical quality-testing personnel, casually recording test data from various instruments used to be an everyday routine. But at the physicochemical testing lab of the Quality Control Department at Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical, recording data with a pen has become a thing of the past.
“Today’s primary testing item is the determination of sodium chloride content.” On the afternoon of April 23, Yuan Suqing, head of the physicochemical testing project, told reporters that Shijiazhuang No.4 Pharmaceutical’s Quality Control Department had begun adopting the LIMS laboratory management system and the LES laboratory execution system in 2020. Electronic record books have replaced paper-based records, thereby enhancing compliance with inspection standards.
Yuan Suqing introduced that the testing data can be directly transferred from the instruments to electronic lab notebooks, enabling paperless operations. Inspection tasks requiring verification in the production workshop will be assigned to inspection teams via the LIMS system according to specific inspection items. The LES system can connect with inspection instruments; once the instruments complete the tests and generate results, these results will be automatically transmitted to the LES system for recording. The LES system will then automatically determine whether the results meet the inspection standards.
After the testing is completed, the LIMS system automatically aggregates the test data and generates batch test records. Once the batch test records are approved, the final electronic test report is generated.
According to the plan, in July of this year, the Quality Assurance Department of Shijiazhuang No.4 Pharmaceutical will launch the QMS quality management system. Batch inspection records and inspection reports generated by the LIMS system will serve as the basis for product release within the QMS system’s functionality. When deviations occur in the inspection data from the LIMS system, they will be captured by the QMS system and subjected to appropriate deviation handling procedures.
■ Product packaging: Seamlessly integrated and interconnected with upstream and downstream processes.
Li Kun, the shift leader of the packaging team in Workshop 208, has been working at Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical for over 30 years. In recent years, what she’s felt most deeply is the application of digital and automation technologies.
On the morning of April 24, when I met Li Kun, she was inspecting the packaging line. “This morning, we had a task to package 2,000 cartons of 1,000-milliliter sodium chloride injections—and we’ve already completed more than 1,700 cartons,” Li Kun said. She added that in the past, it would have been impossible to finish such a workload in just one morning.
Li Kun explained that each packaging box contains 12 bags of 1,000-milliliter sodium chloride injection, making it a large-sized package that previously could only be handled manually. Last year, they introduced a new automated boxing machine and simultaneously put into operation visual inspection equipment, thereby transforming the manual handling of these large packages. Additionally, they have now achieved electronic detection of production batch numbers, production dates, and electronic supervision codes.
“Right now, my main job involves operating the computer—setting up inbound tasks based on the types and specifications of intravenous infusion products produced that day, and configuring the visual inspection program,” Li Kun said. In the past, a mirror had to be installed on one side of the packaging line so that workers could manually check the coding labels on the back of the packaging boxes. But now, that mirror has become obsolete.
The head of the Information Center at Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical told reporters that they have taken the lead in the industry by using digital technology to connect previously independent production, packaging, and logistics equipment, thereby building a seamlessly integrated intelligent information management system.
According to the company’s “Three-Year Plan for Intelligent Manufacturing,” over the next three years, Shijiazhuang No.4 Pharmaceutical will build a digital factory—based on automation and informatization—that features data-driven operations across the entire system and intelligent decision-making for key processes and links. The goal is to achieve deep insights into resources and data, accumulate models, and provide the enterprise with enhanced decision-support capabilities.
■ Storage and Transportation: With a gentle press, 60,000 storage locations can be called up on demand.
Large-volume infusion products are characterized by their large size and heavy weight, placing high demands on storage and transportation. As early as 2001, Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical built a three-dimensional warehouse with over 12,000 storage locations, transforming traditional warehousing operations into a system that allows free selection of storage locations and enables mechanized and automated warehousing operations based on the first-in, first-out principle as needed.
On the afternoon of April 24, the reporter visited the newly commissioned automated three-dimensional warehouse of Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical Group.
In the control room, on the computer screen in front of Xu Kangze, the head of the Storage and Transportation Department, several small blue rectangular blocks were moving back and forth. “The blue rectangular blocks represent stacker cranes, while the green blocks represent pallets,” Xu Kangze said. On the 24th, a total of 2,000 pallets will enter and leave the warehouse throughout the day—corresponding to 50,000 cartons leaving the warehouse and 48,000 cartons entering the warehouse.
“The volume of goods coming in and out of this warehouse is just a ‘small matter’,” said Xu Kangze. Among the eight automated warehouses at Shijiazhuang Sihua Pharmaceutical Group, this particular automated warehouse boasts the largest storage capacity, with 60,000 pallet spaces. Each pallet space can hold 36 cartons of products, meaning the warehouse can store over 2 million cartons in total.
Arriving at the second-floor platform, we saw that 18 aisles divided the automated warehouse into 36 rows. Each row of storage locations was further subdivided into 90 columns and 19 levels—a scale so immense it was truly awe-inspiring. “Thanks to the management system’s thorough utilization of data, with just a single touch, goods can be automatically stored and retrieved within the warehouse as needed and in the proper sequence, ensuring first-in, first-out operations and shipment by batch number,” explained Xu Kangze. He added that with only three or four people, they could keep track of the inventory status of all products in the warehouse with pinpoint accuracy.
Through the management system, the automated warehouse has also achieved data integration with production and transportation. By comprehensively leveraging data from batch management, material matching, inventory counts, quality inspection management, and real-time inventory management, the warehouse can effectively control and track its logistics and cost management processes. This enables managers to gain a macro-level, rapid grasp of various material-related information and make rational production arrangements.
■ Reporter’s Notes
Digitalization empowers pharmaceutical companies to reshape their core competitiveness.
Ma Yanming
In recent years, policies governing the large-volume parenteral solutions industry have become increasingly stringent, and market competition has grown ever fiercer. Under the dual pressure of these policies and market dynamics, Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical has been steadily enhancing its market share in the large-volume parenteral solutions business while simultaneously pursuing corporate transformation and product diversification, thereby continuously strengthening its position as a market leader.
During the interview, the reporter deeply felt the profound integration of digital technologies into various stages—including R&D, production, and quality control. The head of the Information Center at Shijiazhuang Fourth Pharmaceutical said that they will take “information interconnection” and “data-driven approaches” as the core objectives of smart manufacturing, leveraging the exploration and utilization of data assets to drive business optimization, innovation, and growth.
Digital transformation has become a consensus across all industries. For pharmaceutical companies, achieving high-quality development requires seizing the new opportunities presented by digital transformation—leveraging digital technologies to enable efficient collaboration and intelligent responses across all stages of production and operations, thereby reshaping their core competitiveness.
Currently, the overall digitalization level of domestic pharmaceutical companies is still in its early stages. Hebei Province is a major hub for the pharmaceutical industry. In the process of promoting high-quality development of the province’s pharmaceutical industry, building new competitive advantages, and driving industrial transformation and upgrading, there is a need for continuous exploration and deeper reflection on how to better leverage digital technologies.
We look forward to Hebei’s pharmaceutical companies leveraging specific digital solutions to accelerate new drug development, enhance production efficiency, reduce marketing costs, and bolster data security—thereby achieving digitalization across the entire industry chain. We urge them to swiftly implement their digital transformation strategies and usher in a new era of digital transformation.
(Originally published in the Hebei Daily)
Keywords:
Previous
Recommended News
Share to
SERVICE HOTLINE
Mobile site
E code
Business license