<p>The industrial application of production planning and process scheduling optimization is addressed in this thesis. The first part of the thesis addresses the research into process scheduling application. Several scheduling models are developed based on both discrete and continuous time modelling frameworks. Extensions to both frameworks are presented to address unique production policies and maintenance activities. The potential benefits of schedule optimization is determined through several comparative industrial case studies. The weekly production schedules of the actual plant are compared against the schedules generated by optimization. The historical plant performance is ascertained and areas where efficiency gains are possible are highlighted. In addition, the scheduling model is used to investigate potential changes to production policies.</p> <p>The second part of the thesis addresses the research conducted in production planning application. The main goal of production planning is the efficient generation of a plan that specifies production targets for products over a medium term horizon. Direct application of previously proposed planning models fails to model several unique and key processing features of the production facility. A production planning model is presented that relaxes the detailed scheduling model structure and exploits the use of traveling salesman type constraints to accurately model sequence dependent changeovers. Two case studies are presented to investigate the benefits of optimization in production planning. The first case study investigates the lowest cost planning solution over a three month planning horizon. The second case study investigates the effects of a key production parameter on the optimality of solution. The results highlight the potential benefit of optimization application in increasing plant processing efficiency and reducing unnecessary production downtime.</p> <p>Finally, a modelling framework is presented that allows for the combined scheduling of production and maintenance. The framework allows for maintenance with various timing requirements and extends the capabilities of current frameworks.</p> / Master of Applied Science (MASc)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/11635 |
| Date | 04 1900 |
| Creators | Hazaras, Matthew J. |
| Contributors | Swartz, Christopher L.E., Marlin, Tom E., Chemical Engineering |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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