Process plant performance improvement

Improving performance of a chemicals manufacturing facility is an ongoing process that must continue throughout the life of the plant. Once a manufacturing facility is set up and processing and supporting plant operations are commissioned, costs start getting accumulated, i.e. debited to its departmental balance sheet.

Since the product sales price is worked out based on the manufacturing transfer cost (plus other costs), the expectation quite naturally, is to reduce this transfer cost on ongoing basis in order to become more competitive in the market.

Thus manufacturing performance can be improved by reducing the cost of production of a particular product, by improving the product quality [only if it reduces customer complaints or rework therefore reduces costs or helps fetch a premium price], by producing new products using the same resources with zero or little additional investment and by having flexibility to quickly change over to alternative products that may fetch better margins and/or sales volumes.

In short, any strategy that reduces the production cost per unit of produce without adversely affecting other critical performance parameters of the enterprise is always required!

For an objective assessment of performance improvement, the metrics or performance improvement parameters must be measured and compared with previous values of the same parameters on a day/week/month/quarter/year basis. They must be also compared with competition’s metrics or industry norms for a proper perspective of performance. The metrics must be produced for each product, campaign, product set, etc.

This course presents practical methods for performance improvement in some detail. While the course presumes that the attendees possess Chemical Engineering background, other engineers from Process industries would also find the course useful.