5. Results and conclusions

Of course, it took several months to draw up the equipment models, parameterize the standard functions and implement the specific functions, then to set up and validate the first large-scale site.

The BIOPROD project was then rolled out at a steady pace, taking three to four months for the larger sites, while at the same time rolling out the solution to smaller sites. At the time of writing, twenty sites are already up and running, most of them very extensively deployed in terms of both supervision and MES. The heterogeneous nature of the sites, which might have seemed a major obstacle to a strongly model-based approach, was overcome thanks to rigorous specifications from the manufacturer and the expertise of the project's expert integrator.

The project's independence from a single integrator was also demonstrated, as four different integrators...