Intelligent Decision Support and Control Technologies for Continuous Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals and Fine Chemicals

Although continuous crystallisation provides significant benefits to innovative manufacture, the key challenge of real time, robust monitoring of quantitative attributes (form, shape, size) of particulate products still remains a massive challenge. While particle attributes are crucial for downstream processing of products, no current solution allows the processing of data from in-line sensors to reliably extract these attributes in real time across multiple manufacturing steps and the subsequent use of this knowledge for IDS and control of processes. The development of solutions for the sector requires expertise across many technologies driven by end user requirements. Industrial co-creators will provide the requirements, the range of expertise within the applicants ensuring that the goals of the programme are met. The grant will enable the establishment of a process test-bed which as the project matures, will be made available to a range of national and international user and application communities. This activity will support the creation of a requirement and technology roadmap, in so doing informing both the research and commercial communities on future opportunities. The project will also yield the following added value to the community:
- the cross-disciplinary nature of the project and participating teams will stimulate new solutions and promote creativity through sharing best practice in executing research from different perspectives
- the PDRAs will be applying their know-how to joint development tasks, allowing them to gain comprehensive knowledge and expertise across a range of field and in so doing provide trained, talented engineers that will fuel the deployment of these innovative solutions
- the project addresses the integration of a number of distinct architectural layers to transform a physical infrastructure into a flexible platform which supports a range of applications whilst accessible to users

The project contains the following elements of a strategic impact strategy;
- fostering the global economic competitiveness of the UK. As the industrial co-creators will have first access to the technology, and since dissemination will be carried out initially within the UK, the project will enhance economic competitiveness.
- increasing the effectiveness of UK business by engaging with industries across the supply chain, in so doing promoting future commercial partnerships aimed at capturing the massive global market opportunities for these solutions.
- increasing practical engagement - most notably through the pilot process test-bed - with key researchers in academia who can evaluate new concepts within a controlled environment
and contains the following key people-based activities;
- collaboration with industrial partners
- exchange/sustaining/exploration of knowledge
- cross-disciplinary collaborations/cross-sector learning
- engagement with wider community of beneficiaries (public demonstrations)
- new collaborations/research activities to enhance exploitation
In order to reach the widest possible impact and outreach, the plan is focussed on cross-disciplinary learning based on strong engagement with a wide range of beneficiaries including ICT hardware and software suppliers, ICT exploitation providers and users involved in pharmaceutical and fine chemicals manufacturing.

The project combines a range of disciplines in academia and the private sectors and consequently the outputs of the project will bring benefit to all communities and the economy. The industry co-creators contributing to the activities range from end users, to data management providers through to SMEs offering technology solutions to the sector. The Academic institutions have established strong knowledge exchange programmes to transmit the relevance of their research to the public. The knowledge exchange within the project between the disciplines will enhance the project and the partners, particularly between the pharmaceutical specialists and engineers.The project will deliver highly skilled people to a key sector whilst meeting the needs of industry for researchers to address their environmental challenges that have increased over the recent past.