Yvonne Duckworth, PE

Fellow - Digital Technology

Philadelphia, PA

Yvonne Duckworth full length

A subject matter expert in Pharma 4.0™, Yvonne is a registered automation engineer with 30 years of technical design and project leadership experience within the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Her expertise includes developing overall control system strategy, instrumentation design, process control system design, control system network architecture design, control system programming, commissioning, validation, construction and start-up support activities. She provides automation and digitalization strategic consulting for our clients, helping them to identify current pain points in their facilities, determine how digital technologies can address these areas, and develop a digitalization roadmap for implementation. Additionally, Yvonne has extensive experience in vertical and horizontal system integration between systems including PCS, MES, Data Historian, ERP, LIMS, and others.

“I am very passionate about working with our clients to assess their current Digitalization level and develop a roadmap for Pharma 4.0™ implementation. It is exciting to work with our clients to embrace the concept of adopting new Pharma 4.0™ technologies which will improve manufacturing efficiency, provide a return on investment, and create a digitally connected manufacturing facility. There are a lot of factors that need to be considered when making the decision to adopt new technology, including impact on the design of a facility. ”

Yvonne is a member of ISPE, Women in Pharma, Women in Bio, and ISA. She serves as a chairperson on the ISPE Pharma 4.0™ Leadership Team. As the first person on this team from the U.S., she is helping ISPE bring the Pharma 4.0™ initiative—which started in Europe—to the U.S. and help it reach a global audience. Yvonne is also the co-chair of the ISPE Pharma 4.0™ Holistic Digital Enablement Working Group and a chapter lead author of the forthcoming ISPE Pharma 4.0™ Baseline Guide. Finally, she is an integral part of the ISPE Workforce of the Future for Robotics and Automation, an initiative that works with universities to develop curriculum for robotics and automation.

Yvonne is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including ISPE, Interphex and PDA, both nationally and internationally.  She has also served on conference committees, including the PDA Robotics and Automation conference in May 2022 and the ISPE Pharma 4.0 conference in Vienna in Dec 2022.

She received her Master of Business Administration from Rider University and Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Widener University.

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