Addressing the operational challenges in the development, manufacture, and supply of advanced materials and performance products
Introduction
The chemical industry is a very mature industry that has undergone significant consolidation and changes in the face of increasing competitive pressures. Long standing manufacturers have been forced to respond to eroding profit margins by making significant changes to their business portfolio and customer base. Chemical companies are de-emphasizing or abandoning historically core businesses and moving downstream to produce components, devices and systems enabled by materials innovation delivered as high margin solutions. The Dow Chemical Company has a strategy built around joint ventures and acquisitions, emerging markets, and performance products and advanced materials (Dow, 2010). Companies like Eastman Chemical (Eastman, 2011) and Bayer (2011) are also pursuing higher margins in this manner. For Dow this transformation introduces new operational challenges that are much different from those of commodity chemicals but they still are a target rich environment for process systems engineering.
The aim of this paper is to describe the operational challenges in the manufacture of advanced materials and performance products and to show where and how process systems concepts can be used to address those challenges. First to be examined will be key characteristics of developing, manufacturing and supplying these differentiated products. This will be followed by a review of challenges and their solutions in the areas of product development, crew scheduling, process design and logistics. Finally, current research with intelligent software agents for batch process management will be described.
Section snippets
Advanced materials and performance products
While advanced materials are not new product lines for Dow, their prominence as a source of profitability certainly is new. The market for these products tends to be much closer to the consumer if not serving the consumer directly. These products are also targeted for emerging markets. Here emerging markets means both markets in emerging economies and markets of emerging technologies like solar or wind power. Being first to market for a new technology is a huge competitive advantage because the
Product design using numerical optimization
Advanced material products in the form of components, devices and systems present enormous challenges for product development, especially for research organizations historically centered on chemistry R&D. The required speed of development needed to take advantage of sudden market opportunities implies that alternatives to time consuming, traditional experimental approaches must be used to shorten the development cycle. In this section we discuss the use of optimization in conjunction with
Crew scheduling in an industrial job shop
Some advanced materials are really components that are manufactured in job shops where products follow very complex routings through manually operated machines. In some cases, the key bottleneck is not the machine availability, but the availability of operators which leads to a crew scheduling problem. The incentive for optimization remains the same: maximize value by sequencing jobs such that we fill as many orders as possible on time.
We will consider a problem that consists of a standard job
Rapid validation of plant designs
In the advanced materials sector the pace of bringing new plants online and the uniqueness of their designs presents a significant challenge for design teams to validate that their designs meet business expectations. Discrete event simulation is a useful tool for analyzing a system, the operation of which can be described as a chronological sequence of events. We use a generic simulation model that applies to any system that can be regarded as a non-steady state process. Examples of a process
Optimal loading of semi-trailers
The problem of loading a semi-truck trailer to its maximum capacity is complicated when the load consists of loose drums and pallets of various products, which is the case for performance products and advanced materials. The loader must distribute the weight so that axle load limits are not violated while also arranging the packages in a secure fashion on the trailer bed to avoid movement as the truck maneuvers over the road. The weight and construction of the packages are such that no stacking
Real-time batch management with multi-agent systems
As we stated earlier, key objectives of advanced materials businesses are to be fast and flexible to changing market conditions and customer requirements. These business characteristics require exceptional performance and reliability of batch process management and control. The system must be able to introduce new products, change the product mix, and reroute existing production campaigns. This is possible if we have flexibility to allow rapid changes to recipes, control procedures and
Uncertainty and risk
The treatment of uncertainties and risks in process operations is a key issue with the manufacture of advanced materials and specialty products. Uncertainties may arise from multiple levels and from different sources. For example, in batch operations, there are uncertainties from external markets, such as late order arrivals, orders cancellations, delayed raw material shipments, and modifications in order due dates and/or customer priorities. Uncertainties may also arise from the operational
Conclusion
This paper provided a brief survey of challenges of supplying advanced material and performance products to the market. Certain problems in the areas of product design, production scheduling, process reliability, and logistics were examined more closely and implemented solutions were described. Early stage research in the use of multi-agent systems for batch process management was also presented. Finally, we highlighted the importance of handling uncertainties and risks in process operations.
References (30)
- et al.
Designing environmentally safe refrigerants using mathematical programming
Chemical Engineering Science
(1996) - et al.
On the design of environmentally benign refrigerant mixtures: A mathematical programming approach
Computers and Chemical Engineering
(1997) Chemical product design: Challenges and opportunities
Computers and Chemical Engineering
(2004)- et al.
A computer-aided molecular design framework for crystallization solvent design
Chemical Engineering Science
(2006) - et al.
A general algorithm for short-term scheduling of batch operations. I. MILP formulation
Computers and Chemical Engineering
(1993) - et al.
A new robust optimization approach for scheduling under uncertainty: I. Bounded uncertainty
Computers and Chemical Engineering
(2004) - et al.
State-of-the-art review of optimization methods for short-term scheduling of batch processes
Computers and Chemical Engineering
(2006) Optimization under uncertainty: State-of-the-art and opportunities
Computers and Chemical Engineering
(2004)- et al.
Toward agent-based process systems engineering: Proposed framework and application to non-convex optimization
Computers and Chemical Engineering
(2003) Enterprise-wide optimization in an integrated chemical complex
Computers and Chemical Engineering
(2009)