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，以及创建经济和可持续的制造流程，以实现需求驱动的供应链。乐购(Tesco)和阿斯达(Asda)等零售商希望持续向供应商传递订单，并将交货期从大约20至60天缩短至1至3天，这反过来又要求制造商能够“每天”生产每一种产品。相当大的努力集中在包装线的敏捷性和灵活性上，但很少集中在制造液体产品的需求上。因此，联合利华英国公司、Silverson Machines和曼彻斯特大学启动了这一项目，以实现英国制造业竞争力的阶段性变化。该项目旨在开发一种能够在产品之间持续切换的小批量和可变批量的短期连续工艺，这必然要求工艺本质上是无废物的。要实现这一点，需要新一代高剪切工艺设备，并整合最近在直列转子定子混合器工艺放大方面获得的见解，复杂微结构配方产品的结构-功能关系，以及用于实时质量控制的在线监控。在快速消费品中，制造工艺传统上被设计为最大限度地降低转换成本，并具有较大的生产运行和较少的转换，以最大限度地减少浪费和清洗废水。这种模式面临着越来越大的压力，零售商要求联合利华等供应商做出更多反应。为了实现这一点，需要完全不同的方法来实现灵活和敏捷的制造，在这种制造中，只有在需要的时候才能制造产品。该项目旨在开发一种新的集成工艺设计概念，使需求驱动的生产计划成为可能。关键是在不显著降低运营效率的情况下大幅减少最小订货量。联合利华与Silverson Machines和曼彻斯特大学共同致力于提供的流程设计，将使产品能够快速、准确地通过价值流，而不是依赖远远超出需求的预测&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.