Design of a chemical batch plant with parallel production lines: Plant configuration and cost effectiveness

Floor Verbiest, Trijntje Cornelissens and Johan Springael

Working Papers from University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics

Abstract: We present a model for the design of multiproduct batch plants extended with parallel production lines. ?The proposed model serves as a basis for strategic capacity decisions and is formulated as a MILP model. First, we introduce the concept of parallel production lines into existing plant design models and optimise the assignment of products to these lines, together with the number and size of the equipment, by minimising, at fi?rst, only capital costs. Furthermore, we focus on the mutual in?fluence between the design and the objective function. ?This objective function is not only defi?ned as the minimisation of capital costs, but is extended with setup and operating costs. Th?e applicability of our model is illustrated with an example, where we compare the traditional single line design model with our introduced parallel lines model. We ?find that the presence of parallel production lines is bene?cial when setup costs are included. Moreover, the incorporation of operating costs aff?ects volume-wise asset utilisation per batch.

Keywords: Chemical batch plant; Plant design; Parallel production lines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2016-05
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ant:wpaper:2016008

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