The transition from batch to continuous manufacturing for tablet manufacturing performance comparison and control system review

Abstract

The pharmaceutical industry is motivated to improve tablet productivity in order to adapt to the expanding drug market. One innovative way is the transition of the traditional batch tablet manufacturing process to a continuous process. This paper aims to review the performance of continuous tablet manufacturing processes. From the comparison of continuous to traditional batch processes, the continuous tablet manufacturing process demonstrates improvements in production flexibility, robustness, and ultimately process profitability. The continuous process is proven to mix drug particles with more evenly distributed size and less segregation resulting in tablets with better quality compared to the traditional batch process. The improvement on the continuous tablet manufacturing process requires robust control system for process automation to counteract process noise and disturbances in process feed. A well-tuned Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) control is sufficient for the process to produce a desirable product. Developing a new algorithm for model predictive control (MPC) and enhancing the control system with MPC-PID control can further improve the system performance. Overall, the transition from batch to continuous tablet manufacturing is supported by pharmaceutical companies as well as organizations like Food and Drug Administration (FDA).