CC-00-144 PRODUCT TRANSITION MANAGEMENT IN CONTINUOUS PROCESSES – A WEB-BASED TOOL AND ITS APPLICATIONS TO POLYPROPYLENE

Description:

The polymer industries are comprised of many continuous batch processes. New products are created by transitioning a continuously running process from one product to another. The effective and optimized management of a transition cycle needs to address 5 key stages: Planning, Execution, Recording, Reporting, and Analysis. A major polypropylene manufacturing facility developed a first generation Transition Management Tool (TM) to ensure that all personnel follow a proven, consistent, and uniform way to manage transitions. This tool takes much of the “art” out of transition management, via methodology, and communication of information and experience. Specifically, TM is used to design master recipes, make available process and historical knowledge, and provide default set point values for key target tags. As of late, the system’s capabilities were extended by: increasing the knowledge base accessibility and content, adding features for standard recipe definitions, and making the knowledge base web accessible. The tool enables the integration and coordination of an enterprise's distributed control system(s), enterprise resource planning systems, supply chain management, and manufacturing execution systems, while being customizable to the personalities of the individual process and process operators. This paper reports on the design and implementation of a second generation TM tool.