Sanofi accelerates towards its ‘factory of the future’ vision

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Digital twins, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are among the technologies Sanofi will harness in the latest step towards the digital transformation of its manufacturing operations.

Launched in May, the French pharma company’s new Digital Manufacturing & Supply Accelerator will investigate areas such as virtual production simulations, real-time monitoring and predictive decision-making.

Brendan O’Callaghan, Sanofi’s Executive VP, Manufacturing and Supply, said: “This new Accelerator is a major strategic lever for integrating digital agility into every link of our manufacturing value chain. It enables us to bring our innovations to patients faster, with more agile, robust and predictive production.”

Sanofi’s Digital Accelerator programme began with a 2022 initiative to transform medical practice through the use of digital, data and AI, and it was augmented by an R&D Digital Accelerator in early 2024.

The programme’s third instalment, alongside digital twins, AI and IoT, will also work on areas such as developing scalable platforms to enhance global supply chain resilience.

The Digital Manufacturing & Supply Accelerator, which fits into a wider manufacturing modernisation drive at Sanofi, is located in Lyon, some 400km south east of Paris. The choice of the French city was quite deliberate, as O’Callaghan noted in an interview with Sifted.

“It’s in the heartland of our vaccines innovation, with biologics manufacturing sites in Gerland, which is in Lyon, and we have our Modulus facility in Neuville just 20km away from the accelerator and that’s a best in-class factory of the future.”

The Neuville facility – one of just two Modulus sites, with the other located in Singapore – was also a world first when it was unveiled in September 2024. It uses a novel digitalised modular concept with a paperless approach and high levels of automation and agility.

“We can manufacture up to four different biologics or vaccines at the same time, we can switch from one product to another in days or hours versus months or years traditionally. So, it’s got all of that capability built into it – it’s 34 mini factories in one, basically, that can be connected in any way that you want to make the vaccine or the biologic of choice,” O’Callaghan told Sifted.

Digital manufacturing successes in pharma

Elsewhere across its manufacturing operations Sanofi points to several digital successes. Its AI-powered yield analytics platform SimplY learns from past and current batch performance to enable consistently higher yields and its AI app plai allows the company’s manufacturing and supply teams to predict 80 percent of stock disruptions.

Looking to the future, Sanofi will task its Digital Manufacturing & Supply Accelerator with generating ideas about how it can make a reality of the concept of ‘lights out’ factories.

“Can you imagine the level of control, the level of automation, the level of the reliability that you would need to operate a pharmaceutical factory with lights out – that’s the vision that we’re trying to get to.” O’Callaghan told Sifted.

“We’re trying to project ourselves into what does the factory of the future in 2035, 2040 look like? And we need to start that thinking today.”