Ultimate Liquids' Technology for Responsive, Agile & FLEXible MANUfac

拟议项目涉及快速消费品 (FMCG) 市场的制造以及创建经济且可持续的制造流程，以实现需求驱动的供应链。 Tesco 和 ASDA 等零售商希望将订单持续传递给供应商，并将交货时间从大约 20-60 天缩短到 1-3 天，这反过来又要求制造商能够“每天生产每种产品”。相当多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求上。因此，联合利华英国公司、Silverson Machines 和曼彻斯特大学启动了该项目，以实现英国制造业竞争力的重大转变。该项目旨在开发一种短期连续工艺，能够进行小批量且可变的批量，并在产品之间不断切换，这必然需要本质上无浪费的工艺。为了实现这一目标，需要新一代的高剪切工艺设备，并整合最近获得的在线转子定子混合器工艺放大、具有复杂微观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方面的见解。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，并在很少转换的情况下进行大量生产，以最大限度地减少浪费和清洁废水。这种模式面临着越来越大的压力，零售商要求联合利华等供应商做出更快的反应。为了实现这一目标，需要采取截然不同的方法，实现灵活敏捷的制造，即仅在需要时生产产品。该项目旨在开发一种新的集成流程设计概念，从而实现需求驱动的生产计划。关键是在不显着降低运营效率的情况下显着降低最低订购量。联合利华与 Silverson Machines 和曼彻斯特大学旨在提供的流程设计将使产品能够快速、准确地进入价值流，而不是依赖于远远超出需求的预测，这对于快速消费品来说是全新的。

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.