Combinatorial framework for effective scheduling of multipurpose batch plants

Abstract

AbstractThe production scheduling of multipurpose batch plants is considered. A novel graph representation that looks at the specific characteristics of production scheduling in chemical processes is proposed. In these graphs, the nodes represent the production tasks, the arcs of the precedence relationships among them. The representation is flexible enough to consider a wide variety of production structures, including complex recipes. Both nonintermediate storage (NIS) and unlimited intermediate storage (UIS) transfer policies can be considered simply by choosing the appropriate precedence relationships. This representation provides the opportunity of incorporating highly efficient graph algorithms together with an appropriate branch‐and‐bound algorithm for solving multipurpose scheduling problems. The efficiency of the proposed method is established by solving examples and a complex case study.