Integration framework case study

Initial work on the design of structured products has been presented by, for example, Meeuse et al. 2000, Wibowo and Ng, 2001, 2002. In this chapter a real life example of a process redesign project where process synthesis techniques were applied to a structured food product, is presented. First, we position this work in the framework of integrated product and process design. Then we describe how we translated existing process synthesis techniques into a useful methodology for structured products. Then the actual case study is presented. Finally some perspectives are given. 

In this work an MILP model which achieves the integration of all three Supply Chain (SC) decision levels is developed. Then, the stochastic version of this integrated model is applied as the predictive model in a Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework in order to incorporate and tackle unforeseen events in the SC planning problem in chemical process industries. Afterwards, the validation of the proposed approach is justified and the resulting potential benefits are highlighted through a case study. The results obtained of this particular case study are analyzed and criticized towards future work. 

In the case study on integrator modeling (see Sect. 6.3, column (c) in Fig. 6.1) we find general specifications, either as a basic layer of the conceptual realization model in the form of graph transformation rules, or in a coded form as a part of the integrator framework. Specific models are introduced to represent link types, link templates, and rules of TGGs. Thereby, different forms of determinations for specific are introduced in one step. 

The present study, whieh is part of a broader research activity still under way, provides cost and profitability analysis with respect to organic and integrated fruit production in Italy. A comparison between the two production techniques within a static farm management framework is discussed. Production costs and profits are estimated for two case studies, the first one related to apple production and the second one related to peach and nectarine production. Both the cases refer to the area of Northeast Italy, which is the most important area for these types of produce. 

This chapter has focused on the use of controller parametrization in the integration of design and control. The focus here has been on the parametrization of linear controllers, although there have been promising recent developments in the parametrization of nonlinear controllers. As with the IMC approach, we seek to provide a performance limit independent of controller type, and indeed for stable systems they are structurally equivalent. Its application to operability analysis has been posed within an optimization framework, and as such is able to account for the simultaneous presence of all plant-inherent performance-limiting characteristics. Both discrete and continuous-time formulations have been presented, and its implementation for both controllability analysis and controllable plant design shown. Its application has also been illustrated through two case studies. 

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