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The new Competitive Assessment by global technology intelligence firm ABI Research provides an in-depth and unbiased examination of the solutions offered by 13 manufacturing execution system (MES) software suppliers targeting pharmaceutical, biotech, and cell & gene manufacturing. The companies evaluated and ranked are:

Market Leaders: Körber Pharma, Siemens, Apprentice,  Rockwell Automation, and Tulip
Mainstream: Dassault Systèmes, GE Digital, Honeywell, Emerson, MPDV, MasterControl, Parsec
Followers: Sepasoft

“Overall, the MES software market for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and cell & gene manufacturing is highly competitive, and the top innovators offer very comparable solutions. Technology vendors are aggressively developing new functionality, and competitors must closely watch and identify areas where they can match or leapfrog software capabilities,” explains James Prestwood, Industrial & Manufacturing Industry Analyst at ABI Research.

A total of ten overarching criteria were chosen for the purposes of this analysis and segmented across innovation and implementation clusters. These include how comprehensive the solution is and what innovative functionality it offers, data visibility, accessibility, and security within the platform, the user experience, and the capacity of worker augmentation, the MES’s contribution to manufacturers digital thread capabilities, and the alignment of the MES software with the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and cell & gene manufacturing markets. In addition, the report evaluates MES vendor's ability to deliver rapid time to value, their experience in delivering the software to manufacturers, the extensiveness of the vendor's partnership base, the support for SME manufacturers, and the comprehensiveness of the software’s pricing options.

Körber Pharma and Siemens came out on top in the competitor ranking, with both firms scoring well across all criteria. Apprentice ranked as the top innovator in the assessment, offering a wide range of strong functionality designed specifically for life sciences manufacturing, an excellent cloud-native design, and comprehensive low/no-code capabilities.  Dassault Systèmes scored particularly well in the implementation criteria, ranking second, with its center-of-excellence deployment model allowing manufacturers to quickly and consistently deploy and scale DELMIA Apriso.

“Pharmaceutical, biotech, and cell & gene manufacturing have been slow to embrace digital transformation but are now catching up. The industry's strict regulations mean new solutions must be proven, and a premium should be placed on extensive deployment experiences when choosing solutions and technology partners,” Prestwood concludes.

These findings are from ABI Research's MES Software for Pharmaceutical, Biotech, and Cell & Gene Therapy Manufacturing Competitive Ranking report. This report is part of the company’s Industrial and Manufacturing Markets research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights. Based on extensive primary interviews, Competitive Ranking reports offer comprehensive analysis of implementation and innovation strategies to offer unparalleled insight into a company’s performance and standing compared to its competitors.