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©2008 Ultramax Corporation, On-going daily management
of regular production / manufacturing with current production assets (equipment
and controls) hopefully delivers its Peak Operating Performance. Peak Value Generation (Lean
Operations in some industries) includes maintaining the reliability and
availability of the assets, and satisfying government regulations (e.g.,
emissions). Productivity and performance
(w/ existing equipment) varies significantly with how operations are managed. Achieving Excellence (approaching Optimum) Operating
Performance
has been difficult, but now is much simpler
and inexpensive with new tools.
Typical gains are a few $100K to a few $1M annually per high-volume process. Scope:
The actionable decisions during regular operations are the adjustments of process settings (e.g.,
setpoints and biases for temperatures, pressures, ramps, speeds, feeds, cycle
times, levels). Tuning up operating
decisions yields: ·
... short term gains such as cost reductions (lower consumption and
losses, higher efficiency and quality), sales increases
if capacity-constrained (by increasing throughput), and more reliable satisfaction of requirements
for safety, reliability, quality limits, production rate, emissions controls
-- (with or without economic equivalents) -- etc. ·
... long term gains such as higher future market share from higher customer satisfaction as
a result of better or more consistent quality and possibly lower costs; and delay or avoidance of capital investment
for otherwise necessary improvement projects or capacity expansions. ·
... a sharper
quantitative awareness and creativity of plant personnel,
including discovery of better objectives, problems and barriers, which often
leads to financially sound projects for asset technical improvements. Given an existing process (even with Advanced
Process Control APC) and external conditions (e.g. raw material, fuel,
environmental characteristics), the Optimal
Adjustment decisions are those that yield Optimal
Performance Operations: the best possible balance of all
performance metrics to maximize total benefit to the firm. Determining optimal
adjustments requires the user to define fairly complete performance metrics;
and multivariable, mathematical, intelligent decision-support software
accessible at the production floor – a natural product of Industrial Engineering, and sometimes
of very high-end APC. ULTRAMAX®
Advanced
Process Management™ (APM) is the fastest, safwest and simplest true optimizing toolset available
today; it often enables you to approach Peak Operating Performance in, e.g., about 100 hours of regular, normal production with
10 inputs safely readjusted hourly.
ULTRAMAX also includes a superior, common-sense method to balance Performance
Metrics. Historically users have derived, on average, 400%
ROI; we guarantee one year pay-back! ULTRAMAX is a real-time, self-learning (from live data),
generic, optimizing tool. It does
not require up-front the lengthy creation of process models or the disruptive
collection of experimental or validation data. In addition to effectiveness and speed,
it offers safety and reliability by not imposing adjustments or
intruding into the basic production system. It can be used off-line for studies,
and on-line interfaced with Process Control for dynamic optimization as
measured conditions change. It can
be turned off and operations will continue as before, but now with plant
personnel having enhanced awareness about peak performance. Plant personnel are always in control,
even when turning on closed‑loop optimization for largely autonomous optimal
operations.
With ULTRAMAX you
quickly and easily get significant improvements in value generation from
production operations (without capital investments). It is a great complement to
Engineering, Lean Manufacturing, and Six‑Sigma asset improvement
projects. |
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