The World is a Batch!

Control magazine chief editor Walt Boyes reports on the development of batch processing in manufacturing and what the future has in store for industries like food, pharmaceuticals and chemical processing.

Itasca, Ill (PRWEB) October 3, 2006 -- Control magazine chief editor Walt Boyes reports on the development of batch processing in manufacturing and what the future has in store for industries like food, pharmaceuticals and chemical processing.

“Batch manufacturing has been around for a long time,” says Lynn Craig, batch guru and Process Automation Hall of Fame inductee. “Most societies since prehistoric times have found a way to make beer.” That’s a batch process. It’s one of the oldest batch processes. Food processing and the making of poultices and simples (early pharmaceutical manufacturing) are so old that there is no record of who did it first.

“The process consisted of putting the right stuff in the pot, and then keeping the pot just warm enough, without letting it get too warm. Without control, beer can happen, but don’t count on it. Ten years ago, or a little more,” Craig continues, “batch was a process that generally speaking didn’t have a whole lot of instrumentation and control, and all of the procedures were done manually. It just didn’t fit into the high tech world.”

In many cases, the way food is manufactured, and the way pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals are made, differs hardly at all from the way they were made 100 years ago. In fact, this is true of many processes in many different industries.

What is different since the publication of the ISA S88 batch standard is that there’s now a language and a way of describing batch processes, so they can be repeated precisely and reliably, anywhere in the world.

Read more at http://www.controlglobal.com/articles/2006/161.html

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