Full Title: Holistic Approach to the Industry 4.0 Investment Breaking Down the Fences Between R&D & Manufacturing
Bioprocessing 4.0 is a novel terminology that is typically identified as Industry 4.0 avatar in Bioprocessing. The overall concept of Bioprocessing 4.0 has been increasingly gaining traction and this trend is robustly projected to remain strong. Interestingly, even in business fora, the majority of discussions on Bioprocessing 4.0 are predominately technical. Emphasis is placed on the exposition of existing capabilities, and those under development, a situation reminiscent to marketing campaigns. Even when brought up, business arguments remain largely qualitative which, in turn, constitutes a conundrum given that Bioprocessing 4.0 is de facto an investment agenda. In this talk, we deviate from the technical land and re-examine Bioprocessing 4.0 through the lenses of an informed investor. We show that optimizing Return on Investment requires the adoption of a holistic approach to Bioprocessing 4.0; an approach that simultaneously considers R&D and manufacturing. However, the usual fences between R&D and manufacturing, a manifestation of siloing that plagues big corporations, can jeopardize the overall business case. The main corollary of our analysis is that success predicates strongly on treating R&D and manufacturing as a continuum.