The term “modular” buildings and processes appears frequently across the industry. This text introduces the main modular construction methods used in the pharmaceutical sector and highlights their applications and boundary conditions.
As with buildings, there is also a trend toward modularizing processes to ensure high flexibility in the face of future process changes. Using an example from pharmaceutical biotechnology (monoclonal antibodies) employing single-use technology, an approach to process modularization is presented.
Combining both methods—the modularization of buildings and the modularization of processes—opens up opportunities to design standardized facilities. These can be constructed “worldwide” with minimal adjustments while still offering the flexibility to accommodate future process changes.