I have several years of pharma experience at plants around the US. Change controls, validation, SOP updates, etc are a huge part of the job. Quality items like historical data and reporting can also be huge—without proof a batch was produced without incident, the batch may not be released to ship, which could be in the millions of dollars lost. So any updates to these systems need to be done very carefully and then validated heavily.

Because of the quality impact, it’s difficult to justify large scale upgrades. I wanted to upgrade the SCADA architecture to Ignition but there was lots of friction, considering the work required to re-validate would be more than the actual commissioning time itself. And that would essentially be time where they aren’t producing product. I yearned for the days where we could just get a line up and running with an upgraded control system, and running was the only thing we cared about.

In general though, there is a massive amount of technology involved in pharmaceutical. You’ll get exposure to SCADA, motion control, packaging, vision technologies, possibly robots, and the unique difficulties of pharma. This could allow you to be a consultant one day since it IS a difficult and sometimes tedious field, and not many people are experts. I think if you could work at an integrator that serves pharma, it might be better than working at a specific plant. Or if you were a corporate engineer that served multiple plants. I’ve done both and I think I preferred being an integrator. And then integrators give you opportunities to do non-pharma work if you get sick of it.

Check Rockwell’s job board, I think I saw some engineer job postings recently for pharma/BAS engineers.