Technical functions

The Effective Management of Technical Functions in the Process Industries, SRI International, Menlo Park, Calif., 1993. 

The basic technical functions of a washing machine consist of... 

To specify the operations that can be performed on a piece of equipment technical functions have to be assigned and must be parameterized afterwards. Technical functions are elementary operations, for example charging, discharging, mixing, etc. 

This assignment of basic operations to the technical functions of vessels and stations and to AGVs can be computed automatically by a scheduling algorithm during a simulation run. 

In each plant setup, the production area was placed in the top left corner. The production area consists of stations equipped with the technical functions charging, heating, cooling, mixing and emulsifying. The CIP times of the stations of the production area was estimated as 10 min. 

The number of stations and ofAGV s and the distribution ofthe technical function among the stations were changed iteratively based upon the results of the simulation runs. 

Table 3.1 Assignment of technical functions to the stations for the basic configuration...

Basic Configuration Due to the batch sizes of the production plan, six vessels with a capacity of200 kg and 6 vessels with a capacity of500 kg were used. The technical functions were assigned to the vessels such that every product can be produced in every vessel. 

An initial number of stations was determined by an analysis of the recipes. Within the recipes, sub-sequences of unit operations were identified which must be processed without waiting time or in parallel. The remaining unit operations were distributed on existing or new stations, so that the utilization of the stations was approximately evenly distributed and subsequent unit operations could be processed at one station. By this allocation the number of vessel transfers was minimized. An overview on the allocation of technical functions to the stations in the basic configuration is listed in Table 3.1. The numbers of the stations correspond to the labelling of the stations in Figure 3.5. 

Comparison ofthe Plant Concepts To be able to compare the pipeless plant concept with the existing multipurpose batch plant, a reference plant was modelled using PPSiM. In the existing plant three conventional batch mixers work in a shifted parallel fashion. The three batch mixers were modelled by three stations and equipped with all technical functions necessary for the production of all recipes. Therefore each batch could be processed at one of the stations and the vessel transfers were limited to the transportation of empty or loaded vessels. All the other parameters of the model, e.g., charging mass flows, the durations of vessel cleanings and the recipes remained unchanged. 

The pipeless plant concept leads to 20% shorter processing times for batch sizes between 200 and 500 kg, what clearly reduces the manufacturing costs of the products. By the distribution of the technical functions on several stations, the transport of the intermediate products in mobile vessels and the cleaning of the vessels in separate cleaning stations, the utilization of the stations rises and in parallel the productivity of the plant is increased. 

The technical functionality of chemical prodncts is the crucial product quality in B2B markets. Here especially trouble-free operating cycles and the minimisation of warranty risks play a decisive role. Enviromnental and health-related product qualities can only become significant for the market in places where the technical functionality is ensured and also sensitised customers or employees are available or where companies take action to secnre against scandals and create an image. The additional qualities become relevant especially on demand-dominated, dynamic markets with short product cycles and differentiated quality production. However, on stable mass markets with Fordist structures even minimum price increases or quality changes may prevent innovations or at least delay them for a long time. 

The contents of the promotional material are provided by business and corporate development. As the case may be, they will seek assistance from technical functions. The form of promotional literature and the organization of events are the task of the advertising department in a larger company, respectively of specialized agencies for smaller ones. There is no room for... 

Complementing the technical functionality of sulfur for pavement construction, U.S. sulfur production, while geographically localized, is favored with a nationwide distribution system. Sulfur is involuntarily produced from oil and natural gas, and the switch to coal promise to produce additional large U.S. surpluses of sulfur in the coming decades. Voluntary production is flexible so that the introduction of a major new sulfur use could be phased in without undue stress in the present supply and demand situation. 

The ingredient is listed in an official compendium [e.g., USP/National Formulary (NF)] as a pharmaceutical aid or performed certain physical or technical functions in the final formulations (as will be set forth below). 

The inactive ingredient is used at a level no higher than reasonably required to achieve its physical or technical function. For example, an antimicrobial excipient ingredient could only be used at a level consistent with preservation of the finished product (not at therapeutic levels), and a sunscreen ingredient could only be used at levels that protected the product from breaking down if the top of the jar was left open, not for protecting the user. 

The FDA then set forth a list of 23 physical or technical functions these excipients perform as follows ... 

The tests should be designed to verify the existence of current and approved life-cycle and support documentation, verify system parameters, and test the technical functionality and quality-related attributes of the system, including safety, usability, and maintainability. 

The effort required for prospective validation makes it necessary that QA principles are satisfied. The effort should bring together all the technical functions engineering, which documents and qualifies the process equipment, the facility, and the systems production, which checks that its operating systems are working properly QA, which builds on the database that had been accumulated during the development phase and development, which certifies that its process performed as designed. In short, the objective of the work is to show that the product may be routinely produced with confidence. 

Flavors constitute perhaps the largest technically functional group of substances and additives used in food. Flavors really cannot be separated from food. This paper will discuss the regulatory toxicology aspects of food safety, with emphasis on the use of flavors in food, and in particular with the recent innovations of flavor product development. 

Product (or Process) Champion. From the business, not a technical function. This may require more than one person if the projects cover more than one business. 

Each recipe step must be assigned to a vessel, an AGV and a station. The chosen equipment must be available at the desired time and has to be able to perform the required operations, i.e. to possess the necessary technical functions. 

This section reports on the experimental results that were obtained with the proposed approach on three case studies a small problem, an industrial problem and a problem from the literature. In the small problem, two batches of a first product and two batches of a second product have to be produced. There are two AGVs, three vessels and one station for each of the technical functions required by the recipes. The problem is simple... 

By 1970 Du Font s senior managers, having appreciated the limits of their corporate capabilities for new-product development, redefined the role of corporate R D in their industry, as they had lost their strong faith that research, particularly fundamental research, would be the salvation of the company. They now understood that the postwar product-specific technical, functional, and managerial capabilities developed in the several operating departments clearly served as a more reliable source for the improvement and commercializing of new products and processes than did basic research or even centrally planned, related-product diversification into new markets. 

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