While other books describe production control from an idealistic perspective, this book explains the real process of successful production control. This soup-to- nuts practical guide helps the reader learn: how the scheduling task can be decomposed and organized; how the production control department can be structured; how to hire and train schedulers; and how software tools can be used to augment the scheduler's skill. Author, Kenneth N. McKay is a professor in the Department of Management Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, University of Waterloo. Vincent C. S. Wiers holds a MSc and a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Management Science from the Eindhoven University of Technology.

This book is aimed at engineers and technicians who need to have a clear, practical understanding of the essentials of process control, loop tuning and how to optimize the operation of their particular plant or process. The reader would typically be involved in the design, implementation and upgrading of industrial control systems. Mathematical theory has been kept to a minimum with the emphasis throughout on practical applications and useful information.This book will enable the reader to:* Specify and design the loop requirements for a plant using PID control* Identify and apply the essential building blocks in automatic control* Apply the procedures for open and closed loop tuning* Tune control loops with significant dead-times* Demonstrate a clear understanding of analog process control and how to tune analog loops* Explain concepts used by major manufacturers who use the most up-to-date technology in the process control field·A practical focus on the optimization of process and plant·Readers develop professional competencies, not just theoretical knowledge·Reduce dead-time with loop tuning techniques

This expanded new edition is specifically designed to meet the needs of the process industry, and closes the gap between theory and practice. Back-to-basics approach, with a focus on techniques that have an immediate practical application, and heavy maths relegated to the end of the book Written by an experienced practitioner, highly regarded by major corporations, with 25 years of teaching industry courses Supports the increasing expectations for Universities to teach more practical process control (supported by IChemE)

Practical Process Control introduces process control to engineers and technicians unfamiliar with control techniques, providing an understanding of how to actually apply control in a real industrial environment. It avoids analytical treatment of the numerous statistical process control techniques to concentrate on the practical problems involved. A practical approach is taken, making it relevant in virtually all manufacturing and process industries. There is currently no information readily available to practising engineers or students that discusses the real problems and such material is long overdue. - An indispensable guide for all those involved in process control - Includes equipment specification, troubleshooting, system specification and design - Provided with guidelines of HOW TO and HOW NOT TO install process control

An application-oriented approach to process control. The reference text systematically explains process identification, control and optimization, the three key steps needed to solve a multivariable control problem. Theory is discussed as far as it is needed to understand and solve the defined problem, while numerous examples written in MATLAB illustrate the problem-solving approach.

New technologies are revolutionising the way manufacturing and supply chain management are implemented. These changes are delivering manufacturing firms the competitive advantage of a highly flexible and responsive supply chain and manufacturing system to ensure that they meet the high expectations of their customers, who, in today's economy, demand absolutely the best service, price, delivery time and product quality.To make e-manufacturing and supply chain technologies effective, integration is needed between various, often disparate systems. To understand why this is such an issue, one needs to understand what the different systems or system components do, their objectives, their specific focus areas and how they interact with other systems. It is also required to understand how these systems evolved to their current state, as the concepts used during the early development of systems and technology tend to remain in place throughout the life-cycle of the systems/technology. This book explores various standards, concepts and techniques used over the years to model systems and hierarchies in order to understand where they fit into the organization and supply chain. It looks at the specific system components and the ways in which they can be designed and graphically depicted for easy understanding by both information technology (IT) and non-IT personnel.Without a good implementation philosophy, very few systems add any real benefit to an organization, and for this reason the ways in which systems are implemented and installation projects managed are also explored and recommendations are made as to possible methods that have proven successful in the past. The human factor and how that impacts on system success are also addressed, as is the motivation for system investment and subsequent benefit measurement processes.Finally, the vendor/user supply/demand within the e-manufacturing domain is explored and a method is put forward that enables the reduction of vendor bias during the vendor selection process.The objective of this book is to provide the reader with a good understanding regarding the four critical factors (business/physical processes, systems supporting the processes, company personnel and company/personal performance measures) that influence the success of any e-manufacturing implementation, and the synchronization required between these factors.· Discover how to implement the flexible and responsive supply chain and manufacturing execution systems required for competitive and customer-focused manufacturing· Build a working knowledge of the latest plant automation, manufacturing execution systems (MES) and supply chain management (SCM) design techniques· Gain a fuller understanding of the four critical factors (business and physical processes, systems supporting the processes, company personnel, performance measurement) that influence the success of any e-manufacturing implementation, and how to evaluate and optimize all four factors

Practical Process Control (loop tuning and troubleshooting). This book differs from others on the market in several respects. First, the presentation is totally in the time domain (the word "LaPlace" is nowhere to be found). The focus of the book is actually troubleshooting, not tuning. If a controller is "tunable", the tuning procedure will be straightforward and uneventful. But if a loop is "untunable", difficulties will be experienced, usually early in the tuning effort. The nature of any difficulty provides valuable clues to what is rendering the loop "untunable". For example, if reducing the controller gain leads to increased oscillations, one should look for possible interaction with one or more other loops. Tuning difficulties are always symptoms of other problems; effective troubleshooting involves recognizing the clues, identifying the root cause of the problem, and making corrections. Furthermore, most loops are rendered "untunable" due to some aspect of the steady-state behavior of the process. Consequently, the book focuses more on the relationship of process control to steady-state process characteristics than to dynamic process characteristics. One prerequisite to effective troubleshooting is to "demystify" some of the characteristics of the PID control equations. One unique aspect of this book is that it explains in the time domain all aspects of the PID control equation (including as the difference between the parallel and series forms of the PID, the reset feedback form of the PID equation, reset windup protection, etc.) The book stresses an appropriate P&I (process and instrumentation) diagram as critical to successful tuning. If the P&I is not right, tuning difficulties are inevitable. Developing and analyzing P&I diagrams is a critical aspect of troubleshooting.