While a subcategory of manufacturing in general, chemical manufacturing is a broad category incorporating everything like basic chemicals, resins and synthetic fibers, pesticides and fertilizers, paints and adhesives, and even consumer compounds (like soaps and cleaning chemicals). Despite the vast differences between these segments, they all share a common goal: regardless of how complex or simple their manufacturing process is, producing quality goods that meet customer demands is essential.
While there are an endless number of improvement opportunities – each specific to industry and organization alike – there are a number of general categories that pertain to all chemical manufacturers. The 7 challenges listed are some of the most important quality challenges each organization faces, regardless if they have any quality issues today.
Challenge 1: Ensure Chemicals Are Meeting Specifications
Solution: Use automated collection and specification plans to maintain highest quality level.
Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) are widely used in chemical manufacturing to monitor and control chemical processes. In addition to being able to control the machinery, PLC measures input and output. Whether you’re measuring the specifications of the ingredients used to make the chemical or the finished good itself, harnessing the power of Prolink Software’s QC-PLC will enable you to collect and create specification plans that contain trace fields and characteristics to be measured. Combining it with QC-CALC Real-Time will provide real-time dashboards to flag when specification is not being met.
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Challenge 2: Ensure A Process is Capable and Stable for Chemicals to Meet Specifications
Solution: Use capability and stability statistical analyses of your processes.
While manufacturing products that meet specification is the primary goal, ensuring that your process won’t produce future waste should be top of mind as well. Using Minitab Statistical Software, measure and monitor your processes to catch any issues that may not have arisen yet. Really want to future-proof your process? Real-Time SPC enables you to catch issues even earlier, eliminating waste and rework proactively, yielding even more savings.
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Challenge 3: Track Suppliers for Quality and Consistency
Solution: Use a number of different statistical tools and tests to evaluate suppliers’ performance to ensure an efficient and quality product.
Suppliers of raw materials can be critical to chemical manufacturing. As important as it is to measure finished goods, using similar methods can test whether raw materials are “in-spec". Wondering which supplier is delivering on time? There’s a test for that. Looking to seeing which supplier provides the most consistent product? There’s a test for that, too. Forget the tests: predicting which supplier’s products are yielding the best final product could help a manufacturer deliver optimal product without making any changes to its process.
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Challenge 4: Improve Chemical Formulations to Drive Better Performance or Save Costs
Solution: Use design of experiments to test different factor combinations and determine optimal formulations.
Design of experiments (DOEs) can help chemical manufacturers optimize in a number of ways. For commodity chemicals, cost of goods is critical, so DOEs can help explore ways to produce the same chemical using more cost-effective materials. If performance is the critical characteristic of the chemical produced, then DOEs can be used to design and optimize the product. Not familiar with DOEs? Minitab has a training course on experimental design and process optimization that can get you going.
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Challenge 5: Ensure Long-Term Stability of Chemicals Produced
Solution: Use stability studies to analyze degradation rates and predict expiration dates.
Even the most efficient manufacturer of chemicals can get hurt if it doesn’t understand the shelf life of its products. Stability studies – also known as degradation testing – calculate the expiration date on all products, including chemicals. There are different types of tests to understand both short-term and long-term stability of the products. Understanding expiration dates help chemical manufacturers either optimize production, so that they’re not producing goods that will expire, or help them analyze ways to improve the shelf life of the products.
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Challenge 6: Safety and Environmental Compliance Monitoring
Solution: Monitor and reduce emissions to meet health, safety, and environmental regulations.
Using statistical tools to monitor and report emissions is an ideal way to document compliance and stay ahead of violating policies. If reducing emission is required, use a data-driven framework to reduce different types of emissions. If a process is changed, or a new manufacturing line is being planned, simulate the emission output before implementation to ensure compliance with regulations.
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Challenge 7: Reduce Costs Through More Efficient Manufacturing
Solution: Once a process is capable and stable, harness the power of continuous improvement to reduce waste and costs.
Using different lean tools and real-time statistical process control can help accelerate a continuous improvement effort. For example, use process maps or value stream maps to diagram the current manufacturing flow to identify waste. Once an improvement is conceived, use discrete event simulation to gain confidence that the changes will yield results. One common area for improvement is to analyze overfilling chemicals, a similar challenge in food and beverage manufacturing.
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