Infrastructure for automated pharmaceutical production in lab scale

Important results from the project

Pharmaceutical production is characterized by batch processing, low degree of automation, long changeover times, manual work and focus on the formal quality assurance and chemical analyzes. The industry´s structure, with a long and formally driven product, means that new production technology needs to be introduced early in the development chain. The purpose is to study the principles and structures for the automation of multiple equipments and aims to develop a preprototype for an open software architecture.

Expected long term effects

The main result is a proposal for a pre-prototype to control multiple devices in a laboratory development environment. The pre-prototype is an open programming environment that can communicate with a heterogeneous set of equipment. Introduction of advanced process and manufacuring technology needs to be done early in the process development chain and preferably already in the lab-scale and the pre-prototype makes it possible to control and communicate with various laboratory equipment for the automated design of integrated processes.

Approach and implementation

Implementation of the study was divided into three activities: 1.Communication: Different communication between lab system has been tested and a proposal has been implemented for communication between supervisory control and slave systems. 2. Experimental tests: The study has conducted three different studies of production systems and has shown very positive results, when the practical elements of the study was well-founded. 3. Evaluation: Proposed technology has proven very powerful and the study has been the basis for several project applications.