Towards smart biomanufacturing: a perspective on recent developments in industrial measurement and monitoring technologies for bio-based production processes

Abstract

The biomanufacturing industry has now the opportunity to upgrade its production processes to be in harmony with the latest industrial revolution. Technology creates capabilities that enable smart manufacturing while still complying with unfolding regulations. However, many biomanufacturing companies, especially in the biopharma sector, still have a long way to go to fully benefit from smart manufacturing as they first need to transition their current operations to an information-driven future. One of the most significant obstacles towards the implementation of smart biomanufacturing is the collection of large sets of relevant data. Therefore, in this work, we both summarize the advances that have been made to date with regards to the monitoring and control of bioprocesses, and highlight some of the key technologies that have the potential to contribute to gathering big data. Empowering the current biomanufacturing industry to transition to Industry 4.0 operations allows for improved productivity through information-driven automation, not only by developing infrastructure, but also by introducing more advanced monitoring and control strategies.

Why Is Batch Processing Still Dominating the Biologics Landscape? Towards an Integrated Continuous Bioprocessing Alternative

“…The interest in using these sensors has spiked in recent years due to the growing computer capacity and the numerous advances in signal processing (artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms), which are, without a doubt, the great enablers of their successful implementation. The opportunities they bring align with the PAT initiatives and, thus, agree with the intended shift towards smart manufacturing and, consequently, the implementation of continuous manufacturing [49].…”

“…In theory, they can detect several compounds simultaneously without time delay by processing the spectra with chemometrics [48]. For example, new studies include developing infrared spectrometers [49] and Raman spectroscopy [50], which are being modified to allow for application in the demanding manufacturing environment.…”

“…Like Big Data, Digital Twins form one of the key pillars in Industry 4.0 and the digitalization drive [23,49]. While the Digital Twins concept is somewhat vaguely defined for bio-based manufacturing, there are two types of digital twins that can aid future development.…”

Digital Twin in biomanufacturing: challenges and opportunities towards its implementation

“…Today's biomanufacturing plants have partially addressed this pre-requisite. There is an increasing body of work looking into multiple information-rich analytics in addition to the standard temperature, pressure, and flow sensors [13,14]. • Digitalisation Infrastructure: the second component of an operational Digital Twin is the IT infrastructure needed to connect the digital and the physical part of the plant.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue on “Recent Advances in Fermentation Technology 2020”

“…Manufacturing 4.0 initiatives have been around for a few years, but implementation has proven to be challenging, especially in biotechnology as much of the technology required is just starting to come online, along with an abundance of storage capacity and computing power. Krist Gernaey's group from the Technical University of Denmark have reviewed recent developments in this important area [1]. During large-scale fermentations, the producing strains undergo many cell doublings, and are subject to spontaneous mutagenesis by different mechanisms (e.g., base-pair substitutions, deletions, insertions, rearrangements, transpositions), and other phenotypic variations.…”