Monday, 10. December 2007

Operational Excellence means striving for the highest quality

Intelligent process management makes it possible to run production processes to the best of their capacity

The purpose of Operational Excellence at BTS is to achieve marked improvements in operational processes, from production to logistics. Dr. Norbert Kuschnerus, head of the Process Management Technology Division, describes OpX as “aiming to achieve production without waste. This means managing production and logistics processes at the highest level of technical and economic excellence.”

Tailor-made, holistic solutions

To be successful, a solution provider must have mastered the relevant technical and methodological portfolio and must make systematic use of it. Based on empirical values gained in more than 100 OpX projects over the last five years, BTS offers holistic, integrated technologies and methods along the entire lifecycle of plants and processes. It covers the evaluation and optimization of processes, the dynamic modeling of those processes, the model-based selection of tools, the design of automation, the use of performance-monitoring platforms and MES systems and the continuous improvement of the material flow, working capital and supply chain. BTS designs and implements an Operational Excellence program that is specifically tailored to suit the needs and desires of customers and which will provide support in its sustained application.

The following results were achieved under BTS’s process management methods alone: up to 8 % reduction in energy costs, 10 % increase in throughput, 15 % reduction in laboratory analysis costs, 80 % faster product release, 30 % fewer off-spec goods, 20 % fewer plant start-ups, 5 % higher plant availability, 90 % fewer warnings in production planning, 10 % fewer batches per production order, 70 % less intervention by system operators, and 20 % fewer stoppages of field devices. In all, the savings achieved in manufacturing costs were sometimes as high as 10 %, with a return on investment between two and twelve months.

Process details as a basis for improvement

To achieve Operational Excellence, all process and order details are documented in detail and analyzed against archived data. The required operational management data are supplied by manufacturing execution systems (MESs). Unlike many other commercial MES platforms, BTS underpins its MES projects with a data acquisition procedure which uses statistical methods in its data analysis and compares the data with the process models set up by BTS. This enables customers to assess whether their processes are really running to the best of their technical capacity.

Using its know-how, BTS has developed its own operational management system, called e-DiS, a system that focuses entirely on supporting Operational Excellence. As well as having all the essential product planning functions, it is particularly powerful in the areas of process analysis and documentation, as it handles these tasks in real time with an integrated early warning system, indicating any deviations from the ideal process status. Moreover, e-DiS mostly deals with batch processes, for which it has been specially optimized. The system is supplemented by PerMondO, a tool for high-precision performance monitoring as well as for process analysis, the identification of weaknesses, the implementation of software modules in the process control system and the continuous monitoring of the process.

Broad spectrum of online analytics

Another key role in Operational Excellence is played by state-of-the-art online analytics. This applies particularly to the use of raw materials. Modern online analytics allows a facility to control its production processes in a way that directly reflects the specified product quality. This leads to a drastic reduction in faulty products, savings in laboratory analysis and the faster release of the product onto the market. BTS covers a broad spectrum of online analytics processes: as well as the traditional methods, it offers the full range of applications in spectrometry and online chromatography.