I am an automation engineer and this book pertains to batch processing. It describes a standard that can be used to produce things, using automation, in batches. Many things are created in batches. From cookies to treated lumber to beer to pharmaceuticals. I read this book again after having read it for the first time about 15 years ago. I had almost no batch processing experience the first time I read this book and did not get much out of it. Now that I have worked and been around batch processes for quite some time in pharma and wood treatment plants, I feel like I got much more out of this book.
Normally I read books that I feel the average person would enjoy learning about. This book is based on a somewhat esoteric subject if you are not involved in automation or process control. I have begun work at a pharma plant in Pennsylvania. Like most pharmaceutical products, the product made at this site is made in batches using ISA88 principles. This book is written by the engineers, Jim Parshall and Larry Lamb, who automated three Ben & Jerry’s ice cream plants using the principles described in this book. They used Allen Bradley PLC’s with a batch add-on called RSBATCH. This project took place in the late 1990’s, so the technology they used would now be considered quite dated, but amazingly, the core concepts of ISA88 are still completely relevant. The DCS control system used in the majority of the pharma sites I have been to is an Emerson product called DeltaV. It is tailor-made for batch processes, particularly those that need an audit trail.
I found this book to be a tremendous resource for anyone involved in a batch processing operation. A book that covers this type of material would normally be an excruciating read. The authors have done a fantastic job of injecting some life, humor, and practical insights into this subject and have created a very palatable technical read. Doing a search of this book on the internet, I found that it is priced quite high. Sometimes in excess of $100. Oddly, I also found that the pdf is available for free download on a few sites. If you have any interest in this topic, I highly recommend downloading and reading this book.