Why it's important to redefine 'essential' in this economic climate

Jonathon Speed is Director of Product and Applications for Keit Industrial Analytics. His expertise is in vibrational spectroscopy and its implementation in process analytical schemes in a wide range of industries and applications – from biotech to minerals processing.

It’s a familiar scene: the senior management team are gathered around a table (or possibly Teams call nowadays) and the Engineering Director announces that the project building the scale up facility is running over-budget. All eyes turn to the CEO who declares “strip out all unnecessary costs – only the essentials get funded”. The first thing to go will be the advanced process control or machine learning control algorithms. Then the advanced analytical tools that support it. And probably the automated chemical dosing and feed system. The only thing left is a vessel, the sterilisation system, and pH probe and a sample port. And like that, world leading state of the art facility becomes another mundane half-way house, that will probably perform adequately but will never shine and realise its full potential.

The Scottish industrial biotechnology sector is at a truly exciting time, where promising lab experiments from a decade ago are now becoming fully fledge companies generating product and moving into scale up and true growth. This does take investment, and the current economic climate can make that more challenging than many would like. But hasn’t that been the case for the last 20 odd years? I certainly can’t remember a time in my working life when the phrase “current economic climate” was a short hand for “we’re probably not going to get funding for this part of the project”. We are also currently going through the fourth industrial revolution – so-called “Industry 4.0”. And the subject of that is inter-connected manufacturing facilities, advanced process control, machine learning etc…all of which requires the modern generation of on-line analytical instrumentation.

I suspect that in 1765 the addition of a steam engine into a factory was deemed non-essential and frivolous. In 1870 the use of assembly lines and electricity in manufacturing was non-essential. And in 1969 how many factories had computers for day to day operations? Non-essential! What do all those dates have in common? They’re the recognised dates for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd industrial revolutions. And those that embraced the technology they introduced not only survived, but flourished – James Watt, Henry Ford, and IBM are all household names.

But what could be done if a project is truly running over-budget and there’s pressure to reduce spending? I would hope stepping back and reflecting on what the definition of “essential” is can help clarify thinking – is it essential to turning the factory on, or essential to the profitable business model? But also many equipment manufacturers may enable rent to own or long term rental: if the cost of the equipment is less than the savings it offers you – surely that’s a no-brainer?

So I would urge anyone reading this today thinking “my project is over-budget – what do I need to cut from the plan?” to redefine essential, and think about the opportunity you’re cutting, as well as the up-front cost.

Keit Industrial Analytics has developed the IRmadillo process analyser – a universal analyser for monitoring chemical concentrations and process states in real time.

Visit www.keit.co.uk for more information.