US-based professional services firm Cognizant has announced that it is acquiring Irish life sciences manufacturing firm Zenith Technologies to strengthen its Industry 4.0 offering with new smart factory capabilities.
Headquartered in Cork, Ireland, Zenith specializes in implementing digital technologies to manage, control and optimize drug and medical device production.
Founded in 1998, it operates on five continents and works with nine of the world's 10 largest biopharmaceutical manufacturers.
Cognizant, on the other hand, is a leading services provider to the life sciences industry, working with all of the world's top 30 life sciences companies.
The combined firm, according to Cognizant, will deliver a range of Industry 4.0 capabilities — from factory design consultation, machine sensor and controller instrumentation, supervisory control, and data acquisition, to manufacturing execution systems, batch automation, enterprise resource planning integration and managed services.
"Industry 4.0 solutions, encompassing Internet of Things (IoT), automation and analytics, are a strategic focus area for Cognizant," said Brian Humphries, Chief Executive Officer, Cognizant, in a news release. "In acquiring Zenith Technologies, we expand Cognizant's IoT portfolio and extend our life sciences domain expertise by becoming a single-source provider of end-to-end smart factory capabilities.”
Joe Haugh, Chief Executive Officer, Zenith Technologies, affirmed that the combined business will drive process excellence through tighter integration of manufacturing processes and systems, the efficient harnessing of information and analytics across the manufacturing value chain, and the adoption of IoT technologies delivering manufacturing 4.0.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2019, subject to regulatory review.
The acquisition will see 800 people from Zenith Technologies become part of Cognizant's Life Sciences business unit.
Zenith itself has operating hubs in Ireland, Germany, India, Singapore, the United States and other sites around the world are located near manufacturing facilities of many Cognizant clients.
