Why Properly Modeling the Process is Crucial for a Batch Project Success?

Whether it’s an app or a project, we’re here to help.

Creating reliable and consistent batch systems is a process that requires experience, knowledge, and a commitment to excellence. It is critical to create models and test them during this process. Models can provide process engineers with an effective way to analyze systems and fix potential problems. A flawed process model, however, could spell disaster down the road. A flawed conceptualization can increase maintenance and equipment costs, complicate the process, and result in a failed investment.

process modeling

Automation-IT combines its experience and knowledge with an iterative process to guarantee a quality product that incorporates client feedback.

Here are four stories about batch systems that were poorly modeled:

Case #1

An Overly Complicated Process

A pharmaceutical company created a facility to produce a new drug, spending three years of pre-work to make it operational. Unfortunately, the batch system would not run properly. Engineers tried fix after fix, but nothing would work. Why? Because it was incorrectly conceived from the beginning. Eventually, they made it run, but it is complex, unreliable, and will be complicated to maintain — all because the concept was bad from the beginning.

Case #2

Increased Maintenance and Equipment Costs

Another pharmaceutical company had a similar problem: the concept for the system was okay, but it was poorly implemented — which meant it required an automation technician’s intervention throughout the day to keep production going. To make things worse, the HMI interface was confusing and unhelpful, so they couldn’t always pinpoint the problem. Production continues but with daily headaches and increased costs.

Case #3

A Failed Investment

A food manufacturing company called one of our experts in panic. The problem? They couldn’t get their batches to run, and they didn’t know why. We analyzed the system and saw that it was completely misconceived from the beginning. Quite simply, it didn’t work. There was no easy fix, so the company’s original investment was lost. They sold the plant and didn’t even make the product.

Case #4

A Case of Overconfidence

A company felt the confidence to create a system themselves, but they did not have the required knowledge to create and model it properly. The company forced the system integrator to reprogram the entire system following the faulty instructions, and during the FAT they realized the system wouldn’t work. As a consequence, the project was frozen for years.

We could share story after story about how poorly conceptualized modeling ruined a project and cost companies millions of dollars. But what all of these stories have in common is that they could have avoided these problems had their batch system engineers modeled the process properly.

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The moral of these stories:
don’t underestimate the ISA88 conceptualization. 

The process is both an art and a science, and it requires a unique combination of knowledge, skill, creativity, and finesse.

Asset utilization
(Efficiency)		 Quality Cost Throughput
Greater flexibility
Electronically track and guide steps
Reduce WIP
Decrease cycle time
Manage Shared Resources
Quality issues corrected in real time
Track Materials additions (Gains & Losses)
Streamline Processes
Reduce variability