Authors:
Jürg P. Keller
1
and
Mukul Agarwal
2
Affiliations:
1
University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Switzerland
;
2
Bühler AG, Switzerland
Keyword(s):
Decision Support Systems, Intelligent Manufacturing, Systems Modelling and Simulation, Discrete-event Systems, Supply Chain and Logistics Engineering, Production Planning, Quality Control and Management, Performance Evaluation and Optimization, Human-system Interface, Cost and Value Engineering.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Decision Support Systems
;
Human Factors & Human-System Interface
;
Industrial Engineering
;
Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
;
Intelligent Control Systems and Optimization
;
Intelligent Design and Manufacturing
;
Performance Evaluation and Optimization
;
Quality Control and Management
Abstract:
The performance of modern flour mills depends crucially on value-engineering decisions involving optimal mixing of up to 80 intermediate product streams into at most 6 final product streams during continuous operation. Optimal mixing decision depends on given physical properties and yields of intermediate streams, goals and constraints on physical properties and yields of final streams, physical and quality constraints on mixing decision variables, and qualitative judgments relating value of final streams to their physical properties. In a previous work, the authors presented an interactive tool that guided the production personnel towards an optimal decision for fractions of each intermediate stream that should be piped to each final stream. This tool could exploit multiple Linear Programming computations and graphic user-interface to enable scenario overview and manoeuvring with no perceptible time lag. However, it cannot be used in a majority of flour mills where each intermediate
stream is diverted to a single final stream using physical flaps. The mixed-integer programming required in this case renders the tool too slow for interactive use. In this work, a new tool is developed for the prevalent case of discrete decision variables, which enables computations and graphic interface for scenario manoeuvring without prohibitive time lag.
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