Real-time optimization for performance and efficiency in manufacturing systems

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Global market pressures have had a dramatic impact on the management and operation of manufacturing systems. The increasing frequency of market and energy cost fluctuations has caused a drastic change in the way that manufacturing sites must be managed and operated. Many Canadian companies are spending a considerable effort to integrate science and technology in an attempt to synthesize new strategies for offering competitive services and products for a dynamic world market. These changes in operating culture have led to an emphasis on the design of flexible integrated manufacturing strategies. The objective of the proposed research is to develop innovative process control and optimization techniques that provide maximum profitability in safe, environmentally-friendly and flexible manufacturing environments. Real-time optimization (RTO) is an established process optimization technology that has received wide acceptance in the process industries. Despite its relative success, RTO remains inherently limited to the solution of well characterized processes that are amenable to steady-state optimization. Within this program, we develop new RTO design technologies for process operated with limited information available and that are subject to substantial dynamic variations. The research project also considers the application of RTO in large-scale systems. Using recent advances in the area of distributed and decentralized control, new techniques that rely on the simultaneous solution of smaller manageable subproblems are developed for the design of large-scale RTO systems. Performed in collaboration with leading industrial partcipants, Praxair Inc, Suncor Energy and Johnson Controls, the research project provides new technologies that address industrially relevant problems that can benefit Canadian companies and manufacturers. Three graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow will be trained within the course of this project. They will develop a high level of expertise in optimization and control. The collaboration with the industrial partners will provide the students a unique training experience in strategic areas that highly valued by Canadian manufacturers.