Productivity and profitability: Two words that are constantly at the forefront of every manufacturer’s mind. How can I make my operations, systems, and processes more productive and profitable? What new tools are available to help improve productivity and increase profitability?

In industries like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and food and beverage, these concepts play out against an increasing demand for manufacturers to be able to do more with less. Output and quality are expected to be higher, while resources continue to shrink. As a result, companies are examining the efficiency of their batch applications and how those can directly impact business productivity and profitability.

A new generation of technologies is helping to solve these pain points. Let’s take a look at three of them.

Visualization Solutions

What’s the best way to address a lack of visibility? Make things more visible!

My team here at Honeywell is introducing software systems that combine distributed control, batch automation and advanced visualization technology to enhance operators’ views—and understanding—of batch production happening at their sites.

To help our customers improve visibility, we developed Honeywell’s Experion® Batch, which uses a human-machine interface with intuitive visual analytics to help plant operators better anticipate, respond to atypical situations, and plan their activities. Operators use the visualization to understand what happened in the past and what is happening in the future. Field operators can also access visual intelligence through a mobile app. (To learn more about our Experion visualization technology, go here.)

Such visualization provides ease of mind, so engineers can take on parallel tasks knowing that there is sufficient time before the next action is required. They can also solve pervasive problems through guided troubleshooting—returning to production with minimal downtime, a common concern for all batch operators. In addition, operators can understand how a current batch is performing against a typical batch. This can help anticipate issues, decrease cycle time and improve productivity.

ISA88-aligned Distributed Batch Engine

The traditional design of batch operations is a centralized batch engine. However, manufacturers would benefit from a more progressive distributed batch environment that is more aligned with ISA-88 philosophy.

This kind of system could solve a number of common pain points. Manufacturers wouldn’t need to rely on a single piece of automation equipment for plant operations, but rather could minimize risk by placing batch functionality in unit-aligned controllers. So, if a unit controller is suddenly out of commission, the other unit operations aren’t affected. If this seems confusing, picture a chandelier in which one bulb has burned out. Replacing it with a new one doesn’t affect the rest of the bulbs from continuing to light up. Distributed batch designs work the same way.

They also don’t require batch servers, so there is no required upkeep for those additional pieces of equipment. In tandem, redundant modular controllers that are designed for batch operations and sequencing can deliver the power and capacity as needed in a cost-efficient manner. Manufacturers get a more robust performance from a controller-based system that provides a single operating and engineering platform for batch execution.

Full Automation Systems

In our research, we found that many facilities are running sequential-based processes that require significant fine-tuning and manual oversight. This is pretty risky as it has the potential to create errors and inefficiencies. Instead, production should invest in full automation that allows tasks to be conducted concurrently, which would increase productivity and lower costs, according to many production leaders.

Process controllers tend to be too big for the task of real unit level control, with many units allocated to a process controller simply because they happen to fit. This makes maintenance more complex and logistically difficult, especially when it comes time to make upgrades. An automation system utilizing unit optimized controllers enables a more flexible, unit-based approach to mitigate these challenges.

Time to Invest in New Technologies

Next-generation technologies that enable better virtualization, distributed batch processing and full automation have the potential to solve the pain points identified by our surveyed plant operators. They can provide new levels of availability, efficiency, productivity, and reliability, and do so by transforming the user experience into one that provides clear visuals, intuitive, touch-enabled displays, and interactive workflows. The result is batch operations that are better planned and less stressful.

Solutions that enable responsive batch processes increase throughput and asset utilization, lower costs, and improve product quality, which in turn helps companies create better competitive differentiation. The new breadth of batch management and control provided by these technologies ensures that manufacturers can succeed even in a climate of economic or business uncertainty, always achieving maximum productivity and profitability.

Learn how our Batch Experion can transform your production system.