This whole question comes down to scale. There is lab scale which is “generally” referred to as microgram to kilo scale and production or manufacturing scale with covers anything from 500g-multikilo or even metric tonnes. My experience is in solid phase peptide synthesis:

1. Fritted reactor (glass filter with coarse measurement)

2. Activation vessel secondary vessel for dissolving and activation of the amino.

3. Pumps for solvent delivery

4. Waste management system (drums or more sophisticated)

5. uv spectrophotometer

6. Heat block

7. Vacuum pump

8. Vacuum oven

9. Cleavage vessels to remove the solid support.

10. jacketed reactor for ageinng precipitation (plus cooling system)

11. preperative hplc

12. column

13. media

14. analytical hplc

15. tff or filtration device

16. centrifuge

17. lyophilizer

18. gcms

19. ir

Obviously not all of these are used for every project but as you can see the equipment load is fairly high. This is on top of all the facilities such as hvac, fumehood, solvent lines etc and the required federal license and permissions.

whilst he chemistry of peptide synthesis is fairly simple the equipment and regulatory side of the business lead to a prevelance in contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) who conpanies hire to make their drugs. This decreases the financial Investment until the product provides revenue or big pharma becomes interested