Dear Colleagues,
The Seminar on Practice Problems is one of the key initiatives of the new M&SOM Journal's Practice Platform. The goal of this initiative is to bring the voice of practitioners closer to the Operations Management scholar community, to inspire and facilitate new and exciting operations management research which is relevant and impactful to practice. The page describing all the seminars offered to date in this series can be found here.
The first seminar of 2023 will take place on Friday, February 3, 2023 from 11am to noon (EST). Please join us to hear from Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) Animal Health how linking OR/MS with biomanufacturing drives sustainable and scalable productivity improvements. Click the link to view more information about the topic, speakers and how to join.
Applications of OR/MS Methodologies in Biomanufacturing: Our Vision and Future Research Directions.
Abstract
The process of making medicines in biomanufacturing is fundamentally different than the production process of conventional drugs. In conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing, the medicines are chemically synthesized. In contrast, biomanufacturing methods use living organisms (e.g., bacteria, or eucaryotic cells) to make the desired active ingredients. As a result, these drugs are highly complex with "smart" capabilities. For example, these smart molecules can carry special messages for the immune system or search for a tumor in the body and bind to it (instead of damaging healthy cells). However, the use of living organisms in production leads to challenges that many other industries do not experience. These include high levels of uncertainty and batch-to-batch variability in production yields, lead times, and costs at all stages of the biomanufacturing processes.
The applications of Operations Research and Management Science (OR/MS) methodologies created significant impact on industries such as automotive and semiconductor manufacturing. However, there are only a limited number of papers and a few written accounts of success on OR/MS applications in biomanufacturing. One of the main reasons is that, to date, the competitive advantage in biomanufacturing has been driven by the scientific advances related to the underlying biological and chemical processes. With growing market demand and competition, the industry is now becoming more sensitive to costs and production footprints. Currently, there is an increasing need for making biomanufacturing operations "smarter" to reduce costs and lead times.
Through our work presented in the 2022 Franz Edelman competition, we have proven that linking OR/MS with biomanufacturing drives sustainable and scalable productivity improvements (click here for our presentation in the 2022 Franz Edelman competition). In this seminar, we will present our vision and future research directions to inspire and stimulate new research at the intersection of OR/MS and biomanufacturing.
We will post the seminar recording through the INFORMS YouTube Channel, so colleagues will be able to view it later at their convenience if they cannot make it live. Furthermore, the journal will allow for up to a month any comments or questions related to the seminar from the audience (live or not). These will be posted and then monitored by the Practice Platform department editors.
For any questions, please feel free to contact any of us.
Best regards,
The OM Practice Platform Editors:
Pavithra Harsha <pharsha@us.ibm.com>, Jérémie Gallien <jgallien@london.edu>, Ananth Raman <araman@hbs.edu>,
and the M&SOM Journal EIC Georgia Perakis <georgiap@mit.edu>
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Pavithra Harsha
Principal Research Scientist
IBM Research, Yorktown Heights NY
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