Systematic Management of Uncertainties in Process Operations

计划、调度和供应链管理是流程工业的关键业务活动。它们在降低成本和库存以及提高利润和响应能力方面发挥着重要作用。在现实中，不确定性广泛存在于这些过程操作问题中。它的出现范围从制造过程到动态的市场。成功的流程操作在很大程度上依赖于处理不确定性的能力，因为在确定性假设下做出的决策对于实际实施来说可能是次优的，甚至是不可行的。然而，处理过程操作中的不确定性仍然面临以下主要挑战：1)即使是适度数量的不确定参数也会导致大量的不确定性场景，超出了当前的计算能力；2)不确定参数之间经常存在相关性，这就需要新的数学建模和求解技术来进行分析和优化；3)许多过程操作问题涉及组合和非线性优化，在不确定的情况下求解这类问题是困难的。

Planning, scheduling and supply chain management represent the key operational activities in the process industry. They play a major role in reducing costs and inventories, as well as increasing profits and responsiveness. In reality, uncertainty widely exists in those process operations problems. Its appearance ranges from the manufacturing process to the dynamic market. Successful process operations rely heavily on the ability to handle uncertainty since decisions made under deterministic assumptions can be suboptimal or even infeasible for practical implementations. However, addressing uncertainty in process operations still faces the following major challenges: 1) even a moderate number of uncertain parameters can lead to a huge number of uncertainty scenarios that exceed current computational capabilities; 2) correlations between uncertain parameters often exist, which require novel mathematical modeling and solution techniques for analysis and optimization; 3) many process operations problems involve combinatorial and nonlinear optimization, and it is difficult to solve such problems under uncertainty.