Panel Discussion Reveals Cultural Resistance as Primary Obstacle to Industry 4.0 Adoption despite Clear Technological Benefits
The final panel discussion of analytica India Lab 2025’s second day delivered sobering insights into pharmaceutical industry digitalization challenges that extend far beyond technical capabilities or capital investment. Moderated by Shirish Belapure, Senior Technical Advisor at IPA, the conversation revealed how entrenched organizational cultures, data quality issues, and human resistance create fundamental barriers to digital transformation despite clear competitive advantages and technological readiness.
AI-First Strategy
Abhay Kumar Srivastava from Mankind Pharma opened the discussion with perhaps the session’s most significant revelation: his company’s partnership with OpenAI for enterprise-level artificial intelligence implementation. After 18 months of sandbox experimentation, Mankind has committed to systematic AI and machine learning deployment across operations, representing one of the pharmaceutical industry’s most comprehensive digital transformation initiatives.
“AI and ML is going to be the most disruptive technology in times to come and this I am not saying in theory. I have a big thought because as soon as you digitalize and you start using AI and ML the industry which they have used… will have a competitive advantage,” Srivastava explained, positioning early AI adoption as critical competitive differentiation rather than optional enhancement.
This strategic commitment emerged from Mankind’s systematic digitalization foundation including supply chain automation accelerated by COVID requirements, extensive process automation generating substantial data streams, and compliance-driven electronic systems creating comprehensive digital infrastructure. The convergence of these data sources creates unprecedented opportunities for AI-driven optimization and decision-making.
Beyond Isolated Digital Solutions
Bhaskar Reddy from Hetero Drugs identified a critical failure pattern in pharmaceutical digitalization: organizations implementing isolated digital solutions without systematic integration strategies. His observation that companies achieve “paper on glass” implementations without deeper system integration reflects widespread industry challenges in realizing digital transformation benefits.
“Tomorrow if we don’t unify all these systems and we really integrate and we have to build capability of the industries really to integrate… until we go L2 level integration, where you can integrate your floor level, in-process equipment, process equipments, again challenges come,” Reddy emphasized, highlighting how legacy equipment and isolated systems prevent comprehensive digital optimization.
The discussion revealed how pharmaceutical companies often pursue digitalization for compliance rather than operational excellence, creating fragmented systems that satisfy regulatory requirements without delivering efficiency improvements or competitive advantages. This compliance-driven approach results in expensive digital infrastructure with limited business value.
Promise Versus Practical Constraints
The panel’s extensive discussion of continuous manufacturing revealed significant disconnects between technological capabilities and practical implementation requirements. While participants acknowledged continuous manufacturing’s potential for efficiency improvements and cost reduction, their analysis exposed fundamental limitations that challenge industry assumptions about this technology’s applicability.
Dr. Tathagata Dutta from Judas Expoim highlighted continuous manufacturing’s constraint to approximately 200 kg per hour maximum capacity, which creates economic challenges for high-volume products requiring larger batch sizes. His calculation that continuous manufacturing could require 40 hours to produce what conventional batch processing accomplishes in 8-10 hours illustrates how technological sophistication doesn’t automatically translate to operational advantage.
The discussion revealed continuous manufacturing’s optimal applications for high-value, low-volume products where batch failure costs justify the technology investment, and for direct compression formulations where the technology has proven successful. However, the pharmaceutical industry’s predominant reliance on wet granulation processes limits continuous manufacturing’s immediate applicability across existing product portfolios.
The Data Quality Crisis
Multiple panelists identified data quality as a fundamental barrier to effective digitalization implementation. Their collective experience revealed how historical pharmaceutical data contains systematic errors, missing information, and inconsistencies that prevent effective AI and machine learning applications.
“When we talk of so much of data, all the data that has been raised in the past have a lot of riddles in them… you will take at least a month to clean up all that data before you put it on a platform to improve,” observed Venkatanarayan V from Dr. Reddy’s, describing how data preprocessing requirements often exceed analysis timelines.
This data quality crisis reflects decades of compliance-focused documentation rather than analytics-optimized data collection. Pharmaceutical companies must invest substantial resources in data cleansing and standardization before realizing AI and digitalization benefits, creating implementation barriers that many organizations underestimate.
Cultural Resistance to Change
Perhaps the discussion’s most significant insight concerned human resistance to technological change within pharmaceutical organizations. Belapure’s observation that “the mental frame of people as to what they want to do and how they will do it, that is a huge block” identified cultural barriers as more significant obstacles than technical or financial constraints.
The panel revealed how experienced operators who excel with existing technologies often resist newer systems that require different skill sets and approaches. This resistance persists despite younger employees’ demonstrated ability to adapt quickly to digital technologies, creating generational divides within pharmaceutical organizations.
Dr. Reddy’s implementation of “reverse mentorship” programs, where junior employees train senior staff on digital technologies, represents innovative approaches to overcoming cultural barriers. However, the discussion acknowledged that systematic cultural transformation requires sustained organizational commitment rather than isolated training initiatives.
Digital Twins& Remote Monitoring
Dutta’s detailed description of digital twin technology implementation revealed sophisticated capabilities for remote process monitoring and optimization. His example of engineers monitoring tablet coating processes from thousands of miles away using sensors, cameras, and virtual platforms demonstrated how digital technologies can transform pharmaceutical operations beyond simple automation.
“The engineer sits at some place, they will make the virtual platform, the real physical machine is attached with the sensors, cameras and they will take out what is happening inside, how the turbulence is happening,” Dutta explained, illustrating how digital twins enable unprecedented process visibility and control.
This technology represents fundamental shifts from reactive to predictive maintenance, from scheduled to condition-based interventions, and from local to remote operational oversight. However, implementation requires substantial infrastructure investment and organizational capability development that many pharmaceutical companies struggle to justify.
Startup Collaboration Imperative
The discussion addressed pharmaceutical industry innovation challenges through startup and academic institution collaboration. Participants acknowledged that large pharmaceutical companies often lack the agility and risk tolerance necessary for breakthrough innovation, making external partnerships essential for technological advancement.
“Innovation happens in a small company, not in big companies, because of their agility, decision making, and all those things… big companies… are the killing fields for innovation,” Dutta observed, challenging conventional assumptions about pharmaceutical industry innovation capabilities.
Academic institution partnerships offer particular advantages for regulatory compliance, as research activities often avoid licensing requirements that burden commercial development. This regulatory flexibility enables faster experimentation and validation of innovative approaches before commercial implementation.
Learning from Other Industries
The panel consistently referenced superior operational excellence in automotive and FMCG industries as benchmarks for pharmaceutical improvement opportunities. Belapure’s example of Toyota’s mixed-model production lines and overall equipment efficiency (OEE) metrics demonstrated how other industries achieve operational sophistication that pharmaceutical manufacturing rarely matches.
“Why should pharma be the follower?” Belapure challenged, describing how pharmaceutical companies lag behind other industries in implementing proven operational excellence methodologies including total productive maintenance, systematic equipment efficiency optimization, and predictive quality systems.
Dr. Reddy’s achievement of 500-600 day mean time between failures for critical equipment demonstrates pharmaceutical industry potential for operational excellence when systematic approaches are properly implemented. However, such achievements remain exceptional rather than industry standard.
Environmental Sustainability
An audience question about pharmaceutical industry environmental impact revealed limited organizational preparation for sustainability requirements. The discussion touched on scope 3 emissions tracking complexity and the need for industry collaboration to address environmental compliance effectively.
Participants acknowledged pharmaceutical industry responsibility for approximately 4.4% of global emissions while expressing uncertainty about comprehensive sustainability solutions. This gap suggests that environmental compliance may become a significant competitive differentiator as regulatory and market pressure intensifies.
Implementation Barriers
The panel’s collective analysis identified multiple implementation barriers that prevent pharmaceutical digital transformation despite clear technological capabilities and business benefits:
Organizational Culture: Resistance to change among experienced staff creates adoption barriers that training programs alone cannot address.
Data Infrastructure: Historical data quality issues require substantial cleansing and standardization before analytics applications become effective.
System Integration: Legacy equipment and isolated digital solutions prevent comprehensive optimization without major infrastructure investments.
Regulatory Complexity: Compliance requirements often drive digital implementations toward minimum viable solutions rather than optimal operational configurations.
Skills Gaps: Pharmaceutical organizations lack digital business translators capable of converting operational needs into effective technological solutions.
The Competitive Transformation Ahead
The discussion revealed pharmaceutical industry digitalization as inevitable competitive transformation rather than optional enhancement. Companies implementing comprehensive digital strategies, particularly AI and machine learning capabilities, will achieve operational advantages that late adopters may struggle to overcome.
Mankind Pharma’s systematic AI implementation, Dr. Reddy’s digital business translator development, and successful digital twin deployments demonstrate that pharmaceutical companies can achieve significant digitalization benefits when supported by appropriate organizational commitment and systematic implementation approaches.
However, the panel’s collective experience suggests that successful digital transformation requires comprehensive organizational development rather than technology acquisition alone. Companies must address cultural barriers, data quality issues, and skills gaps while maintaining regulatory compliance and operational continuity.
Looking Forward: The Human-Technology Integration Challenge
The panel discussion positioned pharmaceutical digitalization as fundamentally about human-technology integration rather than technological sophistication alone. Organizations that successfully navigate cultural transformation, develop appropriate skill sets, and implement systematic change management approaches will emerge as digital leaders.
The conversation revealed that pharmaceutical industry digitalization challenges mirror broader organizational transformation requirements rather than representing unique technological problems. Success depends on leadership commitment, cultural adaptation, and systematic capability development rather than simply acquiring advanced technologies.
The future pharmaceutical industry will likely be defined by companies that master human-technology integration while maintaining the safety, quality, and compliance standards that define pharmaceutical excellence. This integration represents the industry’s next evolutionary challenge beyond traditional manufacturing and regulatory competencies.
- Naresh Nunna
