Control Engineering Services for
Pharmaceutical Industry

CONSULTANCY TRAINING EXAMPLES OF OUR WORK

Consultancy

ISC provides independent, high quality control engineering consultancy services to the pharmaceutical industries.

ISC specialises in:

  • Solving difficult practical control problems that other suppliers have looked at but failed to solve.
  • Optimal control design and parameters that yield the most profitable or best way of operating a plant or system.
  • High-fidelity dynamic simulation for:
    • Benefits analysis of process and control modifications.
    • De-risking the design and commissioning of new process equipment and control systems.
    • Re-tuning troublesome control loops.
  • Software engineering services - such as requirements capture, development, and process connectivity and data exchange via industry-standard communication protocols such as OPC UA, Modbus, HTTP, TCP/IP, CAN, RS232/RS485.
  • Model-based process optimisation. Adaptive Model-Based Process Optimisation

Our simulation models are always validated to the highest standards against plant data from production or prototype testing, to ensure that the simulation accurately represent the real system.

Optimal control solutions can range from simple classical feedback/feedforward to advanced control, such as model-based methods like MPC. Nevertheless, simplicity remains a key objective in our solutions, providing performance criteria can be met.

Our clients include Centre for Process Innovation, GSK and Roche.

Training

We provide standard, industry specific and bespoke courses on a range of fundamental and advanced control engineering topics.

Industry-Specific Training

We can adapt individual courses to suit your company's industry/business.(Examples)

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EXAMPLES OF OUR WORK

Continuous Biomanufacturing Process Optimisation and Connectivity

ISC is part of an Innovate UK project (COTTUS-3) aimed at providing more affordable, sustainable medicine.

The project, led by Causeway Sensors and supported by technology innovation centre CPI, seeks to integrate Causeway Sensors' TITAN biosensors with CPI's end-to-end continuous biomanufacturing system. This integration aims to enhance the yield and purity of the final biotherapeutic product, while also reducing water and energy consumption and minimising waste.

The novel aspects of the project involve automating the process of sample taking and design of experiments. ISC contributes its expertise and develops process optimisation and connectivity solutions to achieve these goals.

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Bio-manufacturing Process Training Simulator

The manufacturing process of medicines and therapeutic products for humans requires extensive quality control to ensure both safety and consistency. These rigorous quality targets can lead to a high level of wastage so minimising product batch failures is a key concern.

Using LabVIEW and the Control Design and Simulation Module, we created a biological process training suite for operations personnel, simulating long duration bio-manufacturing processes whilst balancing realism and technological capability with cost, ease of use and future extensibility.

The training suite consists of an instructor and a trainee module. The instructor model supports customisation of the training needs and specific scenarios (normal and fault conditions). Equipped with a dynamic simulation of the targeted bio-process, the trainee module enables the process operator to gain hands-on experience of the processes during normal and fault scenarios.

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pH Probe Study

An investigative study undertaken for a manufacturing site revealed pH drift in a process sample occurred in the period between sampling and laboratory testing. Procedures were reviewed and changes were recommended.

Benefits included elimination of routine manual laboratory sampling (savings of over 800 hrs/annum), reduction in pH calibration "trimming" (a saving of approximately 1000 hrs/annum of Instrument Technicians time), and improved reliability of measurements.

More Process Industry Projects