Chapter 17 - Automation of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing process

Abstract

Abstract Traditionally, the pharmaceutical product is manufactured through batch processing with very less or no automation involve. Each equipment is operated locally using its own operating user interface. However, this approach is resource intensive that involves more human power to operate the plant. The collection of the data from each unit operation is often a challenging task. Therefore, the conventional pharmaceutical manufacturing process needs to be modernized. Currently, the pharmaceutical companies are going under paradigm shift from batch to automated continuous manufacturing. The automation of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing process is needed to operate the plant through a centralized control platform, to collect the process operational data in real time, and subsequently apply the data to control the plant in order to achieve desired product quality. In this work, the continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing pilot plant has been automated. The feeder, comill, blender, and tablet press unit operations of the pilot plant has been integrated with a centralized control platform so that the whole plant can be operated automatically. Fieldbus, serial ports, and OLE process control (OPC) have been used to integrate these unit operations with the automation system. All the data generated in these unit operations are collected and stored systematically in a data historian.