The Enterprise Derivative Application: Flexible Software for Optimizing Manufacturing Processes

Ward, Richard C¹  Allgood, Glenn O¹  Knox, John R¹ 

[1] ORNL

关键词: DESIGN;    EFFICIENCY;    FLEXIBILITY;    FLOW MODELS;    IMPLEMENTATION;    MANUFACTURING;    METAL INDUSTRY;    MONITORING;    MOTORS;    OPTIMIZATION;    PETROLEUM;    PRODUCTION;    RAW MATERIALS;    SENSITIVITY;    STEELS;   

DOI  :  10.2172/983127
RP-ID  :  ORNL/TM-2008/107
PID  :  OSTI ID: 983127
Others  :  Other: 400904120
Others  :  1.1.2
Others  :  TRN: US201014%%574

美国|英语

来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

The Enterprise Derivative Application (EDA) implements the enterprise-derivative analysis for optimization of an industrial process (Allgood and Manges, 2001). It is a tool to help industry planners choose the most productive way of manufacturing their products while minimizing their cost. Developed in MS Access, the application allows users to input initial data ranging from raw material to variable costs and enables the tracking of specific information as material is passed from one process to another. Energy-derivative analysis is based on calculation of sensitivity parameters. For the specific application to a steel production process these include: the cost to product sensitivity, the product to energy sensitivity, the energy to efficiency sensitivity, and the efficiency to cost sensitivity. Using the EDA, for all processes the user can display a particular sensitivity or all sensitivities can be compared for all processes. Although energy-derivative analysis was originally designed for use by the steel industry, it is flexible enough to be applied to many other industrial processes. Examples of processes where energy-derivative analysis would prove useful are wireless monitoring of processes in the petroleum cracking industry and wireless monitoring of motor failure for determining the optimum time to replace motor parts. One advantage of the MS Access-based application is its flexibility in defining the process flow and establishing the relationships between parent and child process and products resulting from a process. Due to the general design of the program, a process can be anything that occurs over time with resulting output (products). So the application can be easily modified to many different industrial and organizational environments. Another advantage is the flexibility of defining sensitivity parameters. Sensitivities can be determined between all possible variables in the process flow as a function of time. Thus the dynamic development of the process can be tracked over time and optimized. EDA is a uniquely flexible and efficient way for planners to choose the most productive way of optimizing production while minimizing costs. The purpose of this document is to describe energy-derivative analysis and the operation of the application. The first section is an introduction of the concept, followed in Section 2 by a detailed description of the analysis approach. The third section provides a general overview of the operation of the application. The detailed description of the application is described in Section 4, using the still mill operation as an example. Conclusions regarding the utility of the EDA and the effectiveness of the implementation follow in Section 5. Appendix A describes details of setting up the process flow model and Appendix B provides information on overcoming an error that occurred in using the application on a PC that did not have Visual Basic installed.