Which economic benefits does MTP bring to your company?

Härtner: For Merck, the benefit is rapid scale-up. With the system we have developed, we will also produce. That is a speed that we need.

We have a huge opportunity here because the system stays the same. It just gets pushed from the lab environment to production. As a result, there is no impact on product quality. The roll-out of manufacturing processes in modular plants is the most significant leverage at the beginning. In the future, energy efficiency and sustainable plant utilization enabled by MTP will be a big issue for us.

As already mentioned, MTP allows processes and applications to be seamlessly transferred from R&D to production. How does this innovative concept influence collaboration between divisions?

Härtner: MTP gives us more flexibility in describing and designing processes in a meaningful way. However, MTP only works if we question internal processes and - if necessary - also abandon them. Technology and mindset are a complete package. Everyone in the environment needs to be hooked and understand why and how we are implementing it.

In contrast to the traditional process, the process engineering department has to work with automation much earlier. Building such systems and modules requires a common definition of what exactly the module must be able to do in the end. Since MTP is the driver of the modules, that now has to be defined earlier. This is a completely different way of proceeding.

So MTP requires a new form of work organization?

Härtner: Yes. The main issue is that we need experts, especially at the automation level. We need some kind of intermediary who can translate the old world into the new. Pure programming is one thing. It is even more difficult to describe how the driver should work and to transfer that in turn from process engineering to automation engineering and to set up the system. The experts for this are rare at the moment. However, because we got involved with the topic of MTP at an early stage, we were able to build up experts in this field internally.

One of our most effective leverages when it comes to MTP is the close cooperation between process engineers, laboratory, workshop and automation experts, who all work together in one department at our company. Because of this proximity, communication barriers are also extremely low. Because we don't have to cross divisional boundaries and describe to each other in writing what we want to do. There is actually bilateral joint development here. It's a different world, and I believe this has led to our being very successful in this area.