A decision support system for the operational production planning and scheduling of an integrated pulp and paper mill

• Autor(a) principal: Gonçalo Reis Figueira
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Pedro Amorim, Luís Guimarães, Mário Amorim Lopes, Fábio Silva Moreira, Bernardo Almada-Lobo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.inesctec.pt/handle/123456789/5687; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2015.03.017

Production planning and scheduling in the process industry in general and in the pulp and paper (P&P) sector in particular can be very challenging. Most practitioners, however, address those activities relying only on spreadsheets, which is time-consuming and sub-optimal. The literature has reported some decision support systems (DSSs) that are far from the state-of-the-art with regard to optimization models and methods, and several research works that do not address industrial issues. We contribute to reduce that gap by developing and describing a DSS that resulted from several iterations with a P&P company and from a thorough review of the literature on process systems engineering. The DSS incorporates relevant industrial features (which motivated the development of a specific model), exhibits important technical details (such as the connection to existing systems and user-friendly interfaces) and shows how optimization can be integrated in real world applications, enhanced by key pre- and post-optimization procedures.