Model construction of pharmaceutical manufacturing processes using Petri nets

For complicated pharmaceutical manufacturing processes, using real devices for system integration and testing not only increases the cost but also takes a longer time. In this paper, a systematic approach to the model construction for system integration in pharmaceutical manufacturing processes is proposed. In the present approach, the integration definition language zero (IDEF0) for function modeling and Petri net (PN) are applied to perform the functional and behavior analyses of the processes, and a verified PN model can be then obtained for the implementation of system integration. An application of a monomer synthesis process in pharmaceutical manufacturing systems is provided to illustrate the design procedure of the developed approach.