Monitoring and controlling critical process parameters at the retort production line of Abbott Zwolle

Commercially sterilizing liquid products is an important process step in the production facility of Abbott. In 2017 Engineers found out there was a food safety event related to the sterilization process, caused by deposits that had been building up in one of the retort machines. To prevent potential hazards to the health of Abbott's customers a significant number of products had to be thrown away. The objective of this research is to prevent similar food safety events in the future. In this research we determine the process parameters that influence the sterility of the products. We propose a method to monitor and control the critical process parameters to timely detect and steer on changes in the sterilization process. As a result of the proposed monitoring and control method we can now detect significant process changes within a day.