Ultimate Liquids' Technology for Responsive, Agile & FLEXible MANUfac

拟议的项目是关于快速消费品（FMCG）市场的制造和创造经济和可持续的制造过程，以实现需求驱动的供应链。像Tesco和ASDA这样的零售商希望将订单持续地传递给供应商，并将交货时间从大约20-60天减少到1-3天，这反过来又要求制造商能够“每天生产每种产品”。相当大的努力集中在包装线的敏捷性和灵活性上，但很少努力集中在制造液体产品的需要上。因此，联合利华英国公司与Silverson机器公司和曼彻斯特大学一起启动了这个项目，以提高英国制造业的竞争力。该项目旨在开发一种能够在产品之间持续切换的小批量可变批量的短期连续工艺，这必然要求工艺本身没有浪费。要实现这一目标，需要新一代高剪切工艺设备，并整合最近获得的见解，用于在线转子定子混合器的工艺放大，具有复杂微结构的配方产品的结构-功能关系以及实时质量控制的在线监控。在快速消费品中，传统的制造工艺设计是为了尽量减少转换成本，并且在很少更换的情况下进行大规模生产，以尽量减少浪费和清洁废水。这种模式面临着越来越大的压力，零售商要求像联合利华这样的供应商做出更积极的反应。为了实现这一目标，需要采取完全不同的方法，实现灵活和敏捷的制造，即只在需要时制造产品。该项目旨在开发一种新的集成工艺设计概念，以实现需求驱动的生产计划。关键是在不显著降低运营效率的前提下大幅降低最低订货量。联合利华与希尔弗森机器公司（Silverson Machines）和曼彻斯特大学（University of Manchester）旨在提供的流程设计将使产品能够快速、准确地通过价值流，而不是依赖于需求之前的预测，这对快速消费品来说将是全新的。

The proposed project is about manufacturing in Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) markets and the creation of an economic and sustainable manufacturing process to enable a demand driven supply chain. Retailers, such as Tesco and ASDA, want to pass orders continuously to suppliers and reduce lead times from about 20-60 days down to 1-3 days which in turn requires manufacturers to be able to make 'every product every day'. Considerable effort has been focussed on the agility and flexibility of packing lines but little effort has been focussed on the needs of making liquid products. As a consequence Unilever UK, along with Silverson Machines, and The University of Manchester, have initiated this project to bring about a step-change in UK manufacturing competitiveness. The project aims to develop a Short Run Continuous Process capable of small and variable lot quantities with continual switching between products, which necessarily requires processes that are inherently waste free. To achieve this requires a new generation of high shear process equipment andthe integration of recently acquired insights in process scale-up for in-line rotor stator mixers, structure-function relationships for formulated products with complex microstructures and in-line monitoring for real-time quality control.In FMCG, manufacturing processes have traditionally been designed to minimise conversion costs and have large production runs with few changeovers, to minimise waste and cleaning effluent. This model has come under increasing pressure, with retailers demanding suppliers like Unilever to be more responsive. To achieve this, radically different approaches are needed, towards flexible and agile manufacturing, where products are only made as and when required.This project aims to develop a new integrated process design concept, which enables a demand driven production schedule. Key is a significant reduction in Minimum Order Quantity without significant reduction in operational efficiencies. The process design that Unilever, with Silverson Machines and The University of Manchester, aim to deliver will allow products to be pulled through the value stream quickly and accurately rather than rely on forecasts well ahead of demand & would be completely new for FMCG.