Reduce the cycle time

Productivity is directly related to cycle time. There usually is considerable common knowledge about a geometry and process conditions that will provide a minimum cycle time. Practices such as using thinner wall sections, cold or hot runners for TPs or hot or cold ones for TSs narrow sprues and runners, the optimal size and location of coolant (or heat) channels, and lower melt or mold heat, will decrease the solidification time reducing the cycle time. 

The first thing that can be considered in order to reduce the cycle time and increase equipment utilization is to overlap the batches as shown in Figure 14.17b. This reduces the cycle time to 18 h. 

All of the schedules considered so far involved transferring material from one step to another, from a step to storage or from storage to a step without any time delay. This is known as zero-wait transfer. An alternative is to exploit the equipment in which a production step has taken place to provide hold-up. In this situation, material is held in the equipment until it is required by the production schedule. A schedule using equipment hold-up is shown in Figure 14.17c. This reduces the cycle time to 15 h. 

Finally, Figure 14.17d shows the use of intermediate storage. The use of storage is only necessary for Product 2. Use of intermediate storage in this way reduces the cycle time to 14 h. 

To reduce the cycle time of the reactors, the entering water and styrene will be preheated. The temperatures of the input streams will be set so as to obtain the desired reaction temperature. The water entering the reactor will be heated to 95°C. 

Adsorption/desorption kinetics the time of the adsorption-regeneration cycle greatly depends on the kinetics of the C02 adsorption-desorption profile, which is measured in breakthrough experiments. Sorbents that adsorb and desorb C02 in a shorter time are preferred as these reduce the cycle time as well as the amount of sorbent required, and ultimately the cost of C02 separation. 

With the advent of modern LC/MS instrumentation and sophisticated software, metabolic profiling has gradually become a significant tool to support drug discovery. Early identification of active or toxic metabolites and characterization of metabolic liability of a particular structural series will significantly reduce the cycle time of the lead opti-... 

The improved process reduced the cycle time from 3 min to less than 10 sec and showed excellent capability and controllability with the value of Cp] at 2.33. The ex situ testing of the plate exhibited an encouraging performance, which included high electrical conductivity (600 800 S/cm), high flexural strength (600 - 7,000 psi), and low hydrogen permeability (smaller than 2 x 10 cm /sec)—all of which exceeded or reached DoE 2010 fargefs (see Table 5.1)... 

Batch processing appears as one of the simplest ways to use chromatography. This process uses one column and operates in a succession of injections (at the inlet of the column) and collections (at the outlet of the column). The eluent consumption is the ratio of the volume of eluent used divided by the amount of product purified. Reduction of the eluent consumption can be achieved by, for example, increasing the injected amount or reducing the cycle time [12]. 

There are two types of issues involved in reducing the cycle time of the innovation process marketing issues and technical issues. These must be addressed differently. Marketing issues involve the identification of unmet needs by the customer, and technical issues are related to the capability to deliver. Techniques that reduce cycle time include the following ... 

A parison of variable thickness can be generated by moving the mandrel vertically during extrusion as shown in Fig. 3.58. A thinner wall not only results in material savings but also reduces the cycle time due to the shorter required cooling times. 

Through a compression and decompression action the density of the mold contents is increased, and the more intimate contact with the mold walls improves the heat reduction. The surface of the molded part is substantially improved and voids as well as sink marks disappear. The improved dissipation of the heat reduces the cycle time up to 15% depending on the polymer. 

FIGURE 3.26 Schematic representation of e-manufacturing that includes online monitoring of slurry, cleaning solution, tool and process health, and combing the slurry waste disposal into the system. E-manufacturing reduces the cycle time and the human intervention. 

This study illustrated a drawback to using IR for quantitative analyses because you must rely upon an independent assay for the calibration. The limited number of runs conducted did, however, demonstrate feasibility of online determination of water content. From a manufacturing perspective, this technology would greatly reduce the cycle time for the process by eliminating the need to suspend the vacuum concentration used to azeotropically remove water in order to obtain a sample for off-line analysis. 

The results of process scheduling and cycle time analysis are typically visualized with Gantt charts that display equipment occupancy as a function of time. These types of charts enable engineers to resolve scheduling conflicts and reduce the cycle time of a process. 

As moulds have a high capital cost, injection moulding is usually economic, only if more than 10000 products are made. It is preferable to reduce the cycle time than to invest in a second mould to achieve the required production rate. The mould only has a high productivity if the cooling time, which dominates the cycle time, is minimised. Consequently, the product wall thickness is minimised (Eq. 5.4 predicts the effect on the cooling time). Sections 3 and 4 of Chapter 13 consider further suitable product shapes for injection moulding. 

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