Roadmap for a Smart Factory: A Modular, Intelligent Concept for the Production of Specialty Chemicals

Abstract

Digitalization and increasing the flexibility of production concepts offer the possibility to react to market challenges in the field of specialty chemicals. Shorter product lifetimes, increasing product individualization, and the resulting market volatility impose new requirements on plant operators. Novel concepts such as modular production plants and developments in digitalization (Industry 4.0) are able to assist the implementation of smart factories in specialty chemicals. These essential concepts will be presented in this Minireview.

Modular Production with Bio‐Based Resources in a Decentral Production Network

“…Within transformable production intralogistics modules for supplying and distributing the production process need to be developed requiring flexibility in type, capacity, time and location of production 16, 18. These modules also need to be standardized in scale and size to allow for flexible, functional and mobile entities with plug & produce principle in the production system 4, 17. First intralogistics modules have already been designed by 19, 20 but need to be complemented for various intralogistics processes according to different use cases.…”

“…As a result, flexible and at the same time efficient production and logistics systems need to be established by focusing on modularization [16,17]. Facing the current challenges like global warming and volatile markets, the concept of those transformable systems needs to be connected with bio-based resources, renewable energy and decentral production, which is described in the following chapter.…”

Separation Units 4.0 – Trennapparate heute und morgen

“…Für kontinuierliche Weiterentwicklungen auf dem Gebiet der modularen Anlagen ist es notwendig, modulare und skalierbare Apparate zu entwickeln , und die Logistikprozesse bzw. die Supply Chain den neuen Produktionsbedingungen anzupassen , . Zudem fokussieren sich aktuelle Forschungsarbeiten auf den Planungsprozess für die Konzipierung modularer Anlagen , sowie auf die Netzwerk‐ und Logistikplanung für modulare Anlagen , .…”

Flexibility Options for Absorption and Distillation to Adapt to Raw Material Supply and Product Demand Uncertainties: A Review

“…Nonetheless, for some of the mentioned challenges there are solutions on hand or under research [27][28][29]. These solutions deal with market volatilities by sequential investments that have to be carried out with multiproduct continuous production which efficiently serve the supply chain and lower investment risks [30][31][32][33] in smart factories [34]. Plant flexibility is a key issue in this context [35][36][37].…”