The role of control in achieving flexible and sustainable pharmaceutical manufacturing

Despite advancements in manufacturing technologies, solid oral dose is still mass produced in the pharmaceutical industry. Batch production is effective and economic, but is frequently relies on a one-size-fits-all product approach. Moreover, batch manufacturing lacks the flexibility and agility required to comply with the needs of the individual patient. Pharmaceutical industry is currently transitioning from batch to continuous production. This will result in more adaptability to target various populations and improve product quality for maximum effectiveness. Pharmaceutical industry seeks to continuous processing integrated with online/inline monitoring tools and a reliable automatic feedback control system. To enable the transition from batch to continuous production engineering tools and methods are required. This paper investigates the influence of material properties changes on the closed loop performance of the feeding blending units. Some of the sub-processes involved in oral dosage production perform changes in granulation, powder mixture, etc. This additional information can be used as part of control tuning of the local process control loop.