An expertise business is people. We prefer to name them rather than write about our multidisciplinary team.
PAT-INDUSTRY was founded by Thomas Ricour. It draws on ProcessControlExpert, an activity set up with Pascal Cavaillon, and on a network of experts. It is not a salaried headcount: these specialists come in where their competence is needed, not as a matter of course.
The two people who carry the projects
Thomas Ricour
Chemist, MSc, EMBA, founder of PAT-INDUSTRY
Process analytical technologies, chemometrics, modelling: designing and deploying measurements, maintaining models, training the teams.
Twenty-five years of non-destructive measurement (NIR, MIR, RAMAN, terahertz, imaging, tomography) in pharma, biopharma, chemicals, cosmetics and food.
Career
Trainer on Vektor Direktor and Unscrambler, with the aim that teams become autonomous on their own applications.
Before PAT-INDUSTRY: running EMEA for a maker of near-infrared spectrometers and hyperspectral imagers, from 2014 to 2024, and founding NIR-INDUSTRY the same year, whose work PAT-INDUSTRY continues. Before that, deputy director of the Invivolabs laboratory — agricultural and food analysis, a hundred people, ISO 17025 accredited.
Pascal Cavaillon
Pharmacist, EMBA, associate professor at the Angers faculty of pharmacy, partner on the ProcessControlExpert activity
Formulation and process: Quality by Design, real time release testing, capability studies.
Sixteen years at GlaxoSmithKline, including the integration of Quality by Design across the group and PAT responsibility for metered-dose inhalers.
Career
At GlaxoSmithKline: running a development centre, leading the integration of Quality by Design across the group, and holding PAT responsibility for metered-dose inhalers in the UK, the US and France. ProcessControlExpert, the activity devoted to the joint Quality by Design and process measurement strategy, was set up with him.
Industrial pharmacist, postgraduate diploma in formulation and biopharmacy, Executive MBA CELSA – Paris-Sorbonne. Associate professor at the Angers faculty of pharmacy.
Then sixteen years of consulting. He founded INHALEXPERT, devoted to complex products and inhaled forms — dry powders, metered-dose inhalers, nasal sprays, nebules — and teaches Quality by Design, micronisation, wet granulation and tablet compaction.
One comes from measurement, the other from formulation and process. An in-line measurement project rarely turns on the spectroscopy, but on the link between the quality attribute and the measured quantity: two angles, two people.
The network of experts
Each works in their own domain, where the project calls for it. Naming them is a commitment: their work can be checked.
Who they are, and what each brings
| Expert | Domain | What they bring to a project |
|---|---|---|
| Kim H. Esbensen, PhD Senior consultant, independent researcher, professor, editor-in-chief of Sampling Science and Technology (SST). Copenhagen | Theory of sampling | The design of a representative sampling plan. The first cause of error in a process measurement, and the one no instrument corrects |
| Pierre Dardenne, PhD Consultant in spectroscopy and chemometrics. Namur | NIR and chemometrics | The arbitration on models, their transfer between instruments and how they hold over time |
| Michelle Sergent University professor. Marseille | Design of experiments | The design of the trials: covering the real variability with as few runs as possible |
| Véronique Andrieu Pharmaceutical consultant, expert in pharmaceutical and regulatory development. Marseille | CMC regulatory | Writing the measurement into the file: control strategy, variations, defence at inspection |
| Patrick Saulnier Professor, expert in physical chemistry | Physical chemistry | Understanding dispersed systems, emulsions, suspensions, interfaces, where the measurement alone leaves the explanation open |
| Gabriel Levin, PhD Consultant in process analytical technologies and NIR | Applied NIR consulting | The critical look at the industrial feasibility of a measurement |
| Brad Swarbrick, PhD Managing director of KAx Group, founder of Quality by Design Consultancy | Process chemometrics and Quality by Design | Deploying models in production and interfacing them with the supervision layer |
| Steve Biddulph President of Galenisys SAS. Paris | Validation | Qualification and validation in a pharmaceutical environment |
Two points of honesty. Some of these experts also run a company whose products we implement. That is the case for Brad Swarbrick, and we state it rather than leave it out. And none of them is an employee of PAT-INDUSTRY: they are independents and company directors, brought onto a project where their competence is needed.
What this model allows, and what it promises
It allows a rare competence to be brought in when it is needed, where internalising it would call for a post. It also makes it easier to say no: an expert with nothing to sell on a given project says so plainly.
What it promises is a named team rather than everyone at once. A project generally brings in the two of us, and one expert from the network, sometimes two. We tell you which before starting, and why.
Why we work this way
This model brings a design of experiments, regulatory expertise and sampling theory together on one file: three trades no structure of our size carries in house.
Because the trade calls for it. A process measurement that holds in routine supposes spectroscopy, chemometrics, knowledge of the process, sampling, automation and regulatory. No single person holds all six. The large structures have them all, and bill them all. A lone integrator has two and claims the rest.
We chose the third route: two central competences, and a named network for the other four. It is also what makes possible the position this whole site defends, saying which technology suits your question, and saying so too when the answer lies elsewhere. Our independence makes that choice credible.
Describe your process. You will hear who should take it on.
Forty-five minutes is enough to know whether your question belongs to measurement, to formulation, to sampling or to regulatory. And so who should handle it. We will tell you who should handle it, with us or elsewhere.