Batch processes administration and monitoring platform based on the ISA S88 standard.

The process-based manufacturing industry usually uses two types of processes: continuous manufacturing processes (continuous processes with transitions to create different formats of the same product); and batch manufacturing processes (several process phases for a quantity of material). 

The management of the batch production is carried out through an information system known as Batch process management system. These processes are determined for a predefined manufacturing process and have associated certain formula or recipe which characterise the product. These systems are used for the manufacturing of high added value products such as food, drugs, or chemical products with limited production. Moreover, there is a particular interest in using the same equipment to produce several products. Therefore, the Batchtype plants have problems to plan and sequence the production, having to make decisions about the processed products, the used equipment, the sequence and the manufacturing moment. 

The market of the Batch process management system is nowadays dominated by big corporations which offer very complete products with very high software licensing costs. This is a barrier for small and medium size industrial plants which has to assume high costs or have to develop the production without a solution which allows a centralised management of the process. The need of BatchESS is within this context. It offers a new, low cost and batch production management-oriented product for little and medium industry automation environments. Thus, BatchESS offers a low cost solution for this type of industrial plant, allowing to develop its activity in a competitive and sustainable manner.

The main aim of the project is to develop a global system of Batch processes administration and monitoring, configurable and scalable, based on the ISA S88 standard. The system includes different interconnected modules, which could be grouped in two groups depending on the data hosting for security reasons: the design, monitoring and control of the Batch production processes, with a hosting in the plant, and the management, analysis and visualisation of the acquired data from the production process and the historical data with a cloud-management.

ES Solidos puts all its expertise and technology capacity to act in those industrial sectors which handle bulk products such as chemical, food, pharmaceutical, plastic, paint, refractory and rubber industries.  The monitoring, control and data acquisition systems are integrated in the planned and carried out deployments. This project will emulate some of the projects carried out by ES Solidos to detect the weak points of the proposed solution compared to available platforms in order to assess the accuracy, usability and matching with the market needs.