IMPLEMENTATION PROCEDURE OF AN ADVANCED SUPERVISORY AND CONTROL STRATEGY IN THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY
Abstract This paper describes the different steps followed in implementing a temperature controller and a supervisory controller in a Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to control a 60 and 160 l reactor in a pharmaceutical factory. These reactors are used to produce the initial quantities of drugs needed to perform clinical tests. The chemical reactions involved are often changed (several times a week). The different steps of the project will be presented: • design of a new heating–cooling system, • design of the predictive and Supervisory Control Algorithm (SCA), • connection of the SCA to the SCADA system, • experimental validation according to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP). 
This SCA has been in daily use as the standard control system for more than 2 years.
Automation Agents Embedded in Industrial Decision Support Systems
Upgrade of industrial decision support systems (DSS) through embedment of automation agents is proposed. The proposed automation agents are based on the following design approaches: safe switching logic controllers, simulated annealing controllers, iterative feedback tuning controllers, finite automata based controllers. Moreover, an operator agent is proposed, that takes over several jobs of the human operator, thus increasing the DSS's degree of autonomy. The intelligent agents are integrated through OPC and ActiveX communication architectures to modern supervisory control and data acquisition systems
Design and control of batch reactors: -An industrial viewpoint-
Abstract Design and control of batch reactors provide challenging problems with respect to basic functionality and safety of a process as well as product quality and yield related issues. In this paper examples for the use of modelling, dynamic simulation and advanced control techniques for industrial problems are given. They are evaluated with respect to economic benefit as well as effort for development and implementation.