Finding a single valve inside a sprawling pharmaceutical manufacturing facility sounds straightforward enough — until you’re standing in a gray utility space, P&ID printout in hand, staring at hundreds of identical pipes running in every direction. That was the daily reality for maintenance technicians at AstraZeneca’s Frederick Manufacturing Center in Maryland. Now, it isn’t.
AstraZeneca has deployed a browser-based augmented reality application called Valve Locator, built on MultiSet’s Visual Positioning System (VPS), to guide technicians directly to any of more than 7,000 tagged valves spread across multiple buildings at the facility. The result: valve search time has dropped by a factor of 2.5, and the site is on track to recover more than 1,100 hours annually — time previously swallowed by manual lookups, cross-referencing spreadsheets, and wandering through labyrinthine utility corridors.
The Problem With P&IDs and Spreadsheets
The Frederick Manufacturing Center is a biologics production site, which means it operates under strict Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) regulations and runs around the clock. Preventive maintenance is not optional — it’s a compliance requirement. With approximately 5,000 preventive maintenance jobs tied to valve inspections and interventions, technicians were spending a disproportionate amount of their working hours just finding the right valve before they could even begin the actual work.
The challenge is partly architectural. GMP suites — the controlled environments where biologics are actually manufactured — are surrounded by so-called gray spaces: utility areas that house the pipes, valves, and mechanical systems that keep production running. These spaces are functional but not always intuitive to navigate, and they look remarkably similar from one section to the next. Without a reliable spatial guide, even experienced technicians could spend hours tracking down a single valve. Piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs) are precise but not exactly user-friendly for real-time navigation.
How the Valve Locator Works
The solution developed with MultiSet sidesteps the need for expensive dedicated hardware or complex infrastructure installations. Valve Locator runs entirely in a mobile browser — no app download required — and is activated when a technician scans a QR code posted at a room entrance.
From there, the system uses real-time localization to orient the user within the facility’s spatial map and routes them directly to the named valve they’re looking for. Labels appear overlaid on the phone screen as the technician moves through the space, essentially turning a standard smartphone into a guided navigation device tuned specifically to the facility’s valve network.
The approach reflects a broader trend in industrial AR: rather than building immersive headset experiences that require significant change management, organizations are finding that lightweight, browser-accessible tools layered onto existing workflows can drive meaningful adoption quickly. Technicians at Frederick didn’t need training in a new device — they needed a smarter map.
Why This Matters Beyond One Facility
The AstraZeneca deployment, detailed in a case study published by MultiSet, is a compelling proof point for spatial computing in regulated manufacturing environments. Pharma and biotech facilities present a uniquely demanding context for operational technology: processes are tightly controlled, documentation requirements are extensive, and downtime carries significant consequences.
Augmented reality has often been pitched as a training tool or a remote assistance platform in these settings. What the Valve Locator demonstrates is something different — AR as infrastructure, quietly embedded into the rhythm of daily maintenance work rather than reserved for exceptional circumstances.
Saving 1,100 hours per year across 5,000 maintenance jobs isn’t a flashy headline number, but it represents a real shift in how technician time is allocated. In a 24/7 manufacturing environment, those are hours redirected from searching to doing — from navigating ambiguity to executing with confidence.
As spatial computing tools become lighter and more accessible, deployments like this one suggest the pharmaceutical industry may be closer than expected to making AR a standard part of the maintenance technician’s toolkit — no headset required.
