bottleneck analysis of a chemical plant …（化工厂的瓶颈分析u2026）.pdf

Proceedings of the 2010 Winter Simulation Conference B. Johansson, S. Jain, J. Montoya-Torres, J. Hugan, and E. Yücesan, eds. BOTTLENECK ANALYSIS OF A CHEMICAL PLANT USING DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION Bikram Sharda and Scott J. Bury Process Optimization-Engineering Sciences, Core RD The Dow Chemical Company Freeport, TX, USA 77541 ABSTRACT This paper describes a debottlenecking study for different products in a chemical plant of The Dow Chemical Company. We used discrete event simulation to represent the chemical plant operations and to identify individual processes that limit the plant production. Our analysis successfully identified different bottlenecks for each product. The simulation will be used in future evaluations of the costs and benefits of different solutions identified for validated root causes. The simulation captures plant dynamics and can be easily leveraged to other improvement opportunities in the plant with no to little customization. In this paper, we present the general approach used for identifying the bottlenecks and the analysis results. 1 INTRODUCTION Chemical plant operations have complex system interactions and product flows. The operational com- plexity is compounded by discrete and continuous product flows at different production steps. The pro- duction managers continually seek ways to improve production capabilities and to reduce operational costs. Such improvements become more critical when plant production can not meet market demand. One commonly used approach to improve plant production involves bottleneck analys