A general method for defining and structuring buffer management problems

In an industrial plant, availability is an important factor since increased availability often gives an increase of final production, which in many cases means an increased profit for the company. The purpose of using buffer tanks is to increase the availability either by separating production units from each other or by minimizing flow variations. However, the methods for achieving this goal is not trivial, and depend on the specific characteristics of the problem. This paper contributes to structuring the general buffer management problem for continuous chemical plants and suggests methods for solving some specific problems, presented as a case study at Perstorp AB, Sweden.