Evaluating the impact of batch degradation and maintenance policies on the production capacity of a batch production process

This paper presents a case study that validated the production capacity of an industrial batch chemical process. A risk assessment review of the production system identified that different constraints and uncertainties could limit the actual production capacity of the plant to less than designed. To determine if production capacity was at risk, we developed a discrete event simulation to simulate a batch chemical production process with multiple parallel production units, interlocks in product loading steps, uncertainty in processing times caused by equipment failures, degradation of production process over time, and planned maintenance shutdowns. We evaluated the impact of variation in the degradation rate of the production process, and the impact of changes in renewal frequency on the total production capacity of the plant.