Boehringer Ingelheim – A WinGuard Success Story

The Challenge – Holistic safety in the chemical industry

Founded in 1885, Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies headquartered in Germany. The company focuses on the development and research of innovative medicines and therapies in the fields of human pharmaceuticals, animal health and biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing. Boehringer Ingelheim pursues the goal of finding effective treatments for diseases for which there are currently no satisfactory therapeutic options. With around 54,500 employees and a presence in more than 130 markets, the company generated sales of 26.7 billion euros in 2024. Boehringer Ingelheim operates a global network of research and production sites in Europe, America and Asia – the company headquarters are located in Ingelheim am Rhein. Numerous medicinal products are manufactured there on extensive premises covering more than 762,000 square meters. In addition, there is a large research and production site in Biberach an der Riß in Germany, as well as other smaller sites.

In 2014, the company was faced with the task of combining the previously isolated safety technology systems at its German sites into a common platform. As part of the “Control Center Germany” (LSD) project, a nationwide networked system was to be established that would act as a central control center at the Ingelheim and Biberach an der Riß plants. These plants have recognized plant fire departments in addition to the conventional safety organizations. In addition to the integration of various security subsystems, particularly in the area of fire and burglar alarm systems from different manufacturers, the focus was also on the integration of hazard management into the control center processes of operations management. The close integration with an operations control system was intended to ensure optimum coordinated control of plant security and the plant fire departments, also in cooperation with the public fire departments.

WinGuard is the all-in-one solution

Boehringer Ingelheim opted for the WinGuard hazard management system from Advancis in order to bring all security-related systems together in one central system.

WinGuard not only fulfills industrial security requirements by integrating fire alarm, intrusion and hazard detection systems, but also represents an essential component in the operations management processes of the two main sites. WinGuard is linked to an operations control system for this purpose. In this way, incoming alarms from the monitoring systems can be escalated either automatically or after interactive qualification by the control center dispatchers to deployments of the plant fire brigade or plant security. In addition to a consistent operating logic between WinGuard and the operations control system, particular emphasis is placed on automated data synchronization and the intelligent modelling of location references within the systems. This largely avoids duplication of maintenance work in the data supply.

For example, if a fire alarm system triggers an alarm, this is recorded in WinGuard and seamlessly transferred to the command and control system via the interface. The relevant emergency services can then be alerted immediately and without media discontinuity. All alarm information – including the visualization of individual detectors in floor plans – is
available in real time. The constantly up-to-date display of the sensors in building plans was also a central requirement for the new control center environment, which is fulfilled by the WinGuard CAD-Plus module. The underlying building plans are regularly updated from Boehringer Ingelheim’s company-wide CAD database; the detectors are automatically placed in the correct position using intelligent links.