Batch Expert

Batch pharmaceutical and chemical production are complex processes to control and monitor. The dynamics are characterized by transient, nonlinear and highly variable behavior. Discrete disturbances can have a negative impact on yield, and can lead to unsafe or unproductive operating conditions. By combining heuristic knowledge with supervisory control, monitoring, and empirical modeling, Batch Expert can assist in improving operations.

Experienced engineers and operators often supervise batch processes. These experts can quickly recognize and remedy operational problems. ILS offers the Batch Expert platform to capture such operational knowledge in the form of advanced supervisory control, process monitoring, and alarming.

Process Development Environments

Batch Expert provides value from the bench-top to production.  Within process development laboratories, Batch Expert can provide the primary SCADA and HMI interface to equipment, offline measurements, laboratory values and databases.  The features of Batch Expert can significantly improve process development and scale-up. 

 Tools and interfaces are available to warehouse and distribute a wide variety of data sources.  This facilitates improved process control and monitoring, and significantly reduce the time and effort required to analyze data and generate reports.  In addition, features are available to optimize and develop processes from the bench-top to pilot scale.  This includes a consistent interface to multiple equipment types, recipe and event-based control, and neural network technology.  In combination these tools and features will significantly reduce development effort and maximize the available resources

Production Environments 

Production costs and equipment utilization are the key discriminating factors between successful producers in the competitive global marketplace. The main issues affecting production costs are raw material variability, capital equipment utilization, and process operation.

Batch Expert applications improve process operation by automating the unique heuristic operating knowledge behind every process. Such knowledge can be supervisory control algorithms, smarter alarms, abnormal event detection, and neural networks. The final goal is to reduce variability and process upsets that occur from discrete disturbances, faulty sensors, and inconsistent manual operation.  Batch Expert is based upon real-time, on-line expert system technology. The system is designed automate the knowledge of experienced operators, scientists, and engineers. Control strategies can combine event-based process knowledge, neural network modeling, and process monitoring. Smart alarms can incorporate a physical understanding of the process, and provide operators with detailed root-cause advice.

The system interfaces to existing Distributed Control Systems (DCS), data historians, and Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) databases. The Batch Expert platform does not replace such systems, but rather, complements them, providing a framework to bring together various sources of information in a real-time fashion. Batch Expert is a platform where information sources and knowledge are brought together to create value through automation.

Batch Expert has been implemented in several manufacturing environments. This includes production scale reactors, agro fermentation, production scale chromatography separation, and pilot scale fermentation reactors. Applications range from fault detection and advanced alarming to supervisory control and data management.