Abstract:
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Chemical plants are moving toward more-flexible environments, to adapt faster to market changes. For the
sake of this flexibility, batch and continuous units might be integrated and operated along the same processing
route in a semicontinuous mode, featured by production campaigns of finite duration. Constant production
rates for the entire operation have been usually considered. Thus, production adjustments were achieved
through storage resources, production line stops, and multiple product campaigns. The objective of this work
is to improve the production schedules by developing a new concept for flexible manufacturing, which allows
one to program production rate profiles within each semicontinuous operation campaign. Hence, the extended
formulation presented allows to address the tradeoff between the opportunities that may arise when adjusting
processing rates and the storage needs and opportunities. Finally, several case studies show that the proposed
adjustment of the processing rates leads to less storage utilization and more-efficient production performance. |