Application of knowledge-based control on an antibiotics production fermentation process

Modernisation of control systems of industrial biotechnology processes to the current technology levels presents a challenging task because nowadays, there is a bigger stress put on the automatisation of the production process so that the possible human fault is minimised. Therefore in this paper, the process of sequential modernisation of the control system from “almost fully controlled by process operators” to “almost supervised control” is presented. A decision support system based on various knowledge about the process is developed to support actions performed by process operators. The system brings improvements in antibiotic production operations and reduces manufacturing variance.