From bioreactor to analyzer: a unified view of batches
Context
A biotech lab in scale-up typically operates a heterogeneous equipment fleet: bioreactors (Eppendorf, Sartorius), cell counters (Logos Biosystems), CO₂ incubators, biochemical analyzers.
Each piece of equipment comes from a different vendor, speaks its own protocol (OPC-UA, Modbus TCP, RS-232, file export), and lives in its own silo.
As the company scales from a few batches per week to an industrial pace, this fragmentation becomes a serious operational problem.
Problem
The critical data for each batch (temperature, pH, DO, agitation, cell viability, CO₂ levels, biochemical parameters) is scattered across equipment HMIs, manually exported files, and screens that no one monitors continuously. A temperature drift in an incubator detected too late, a drop in viability on the cell counter not flagged in time: that's a batch to discard and weeks of work lost.
What it costs
- Incidents detected after the fact, due to lack of centralized monitoring
- Traceability rebuilt manually from multiple sources, time-consuming, incomplete, error-prone
- No ability to correlate parameters across different equipment on the same batch
- Dependence on the people who "know" how to reconstruct the history, and who eventually leave
The NOTOM approach
NOTOM Connect connects to the entire equipment fleet, regardless of protocols:
- Bioreactors (e.g. Eppendorf DasBox, BioFlo) via OPC-UA / SQL
- Cell counters (e.g. LUNA Fx7) via automatic ingestion of export files
- CO₂ incubators (e.g. Thermo Fisher Heracell, New Brunswick) via RS-232 or analog outputs
- Biochemical analyzers (e.g. Roche CEDEX) via network export or local database query
All data is normalized, timestamped, and centralized in a single platform. Each batch has a complete history, retrievable at any time.
Teams have access to:
- A real-time view of all batches in progress (temperature, pH, viability, CO₂) from a single interface
- Configurable alerts on critical parameters: as soon as a parameter exceeds a threshold, a notification is sent, without waiting for the next manual check
- Automatic traceability that replaces Excel entries, a batch's full history is available in one click, complete and reliable
What it changes
Who it's for
This use case is aimed at R&D directors and production managers at biotech companies in scale-up, operating a heterogeneous equipment fleet and seeking centralized visibility over their batches, without a lengthy IT project or specific in-house networking expertise.
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