Sanofi-Synthelabo, the leading manufacturers of cardiovascular disease / thrombosis and cancer medicines recently appointed Canongate Technology to upgrade the control on their ageing Fielder Mixer.

The new control system included a Siemens S7/300 PLC, which replaced the existing Westinghouse PLC, and an industrial PC SCADA System with the GE Intelligent Platform's iFix and iBatch packages as the operator interface.

The control system provides both manual and automatic sequence control of the process.

The recipe to be installed within the iBatch System was for Paracetamol Effervescent Granule. This recipe is password protected and held in the batch server. Modification of the recipe is through the batch server. Some of the original panel was left as it contained hardware interlocks. The software however was totally re-written.

A new Human Machine Interface Display (HMI) and keyboard with integral mouse was installed in a stainless steel panel mounted adjacent to the existing pharma MATRIX panel. A new software system was designed and installed for the Mixer batch recipe parameters and control functions, which meet the requirements of FDA regulation 21 CFR Part 11 for electronic records and signatures. The software system also conforms to S88 standards for batch processing.

Two desktop Computers were installed in one of the two rooms adjacent to the Fielder Mixer plant configured as a "server" and "client" architecture. These PC's were connected to the plant PLC via standard Local Area Network (LAN) Ethernet cable and there was also a separate Ethernet connection to the IT Department Network for file back up.

The HMI and keyboard in the new control panel was connected to one of the PC's with extended cable drivers.

The PLC digital and analogue inputs and outputs were connected to the relays and timers within the Motor Control Centre (MCC) to control the plant.

The new system provided four main display and control screens:
1) Main - allowing user access to all areas. The system is secure on power up disabling all operating system actions and logging on as the lowest user level.
2) Mimic - displaying block overview of the mixer status along with key data signals together with important batch information.
3) Batch Control - Allowing the selection and control of a batch such as creating a batch from a recipe template, starting / stopping and so on. It also aloows for the manipulation of recipes and the various stages such as pre-blend, granulation, additions and discharge.
4) Alarm Summaries - displaying PLC triggered alarms allowing operator handling such as aknowledgement.

Batch report data is written to an external database installed on a Batch Server computer linked to the Sanofi network.