Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering, Vol.22, No.4, 418-428, 2014
A Novel Mechanism for TRF of Plant-wide Material Flows in Process Industry MES
This paper is standing on the recent viewpoint originated from relevant industrial practices that well organized tracing, representing and feedback (TRF) mechanism of material-flow information is crucial for system utility and usability of manufacturing execution systems (MES), essentially, for activities on the side of multi-level decision making and optimization mainly in the planning and scheduling. In this paper, we investigate a key issue emphasized on a route of multi-level information evolution on the side of large-scale feedback, where material-flow states could evolve from the measuring data (local states) to networked event-type information cells (global states) and consequently to the key performance indicators (KPI) type information (gross states). Importantly, with adaptabilities to frequent structural dynamics residing in running material flows, this evolving route should be modeled as a suit of sophisticated mechanism for large-scale dynamic states tracking and representing so as to upgrade accuracy and usability of the feedback information in MES. To clarify inherent complexities of this evolving route, the investigated issue is demonstrated from extended process systems engineering (PSE) point of view, and the TRF principles of the multi-level feedback information (states) are highlighted under the multi-scale methodology. As the main contribution, a novel mechanism called TRF modeling mechanism is introduced.
Keywords:extended process systems engineering;manufacturing execution systems;material flow;modeling method