Product transfer between plants using historical process data

Abstract Based on the concepts laid out in an earlier article (Jaeckle and MacGregor, 1998), this paper defines the problem of moving the production of a particular product grade from a plant A to another plant B when both plants have already produced a similar range of grades. Since the two plants may differ in size, configurations, and so on, the process conditions required to produce any given product grade may be very different in the two plants. How historical process data on both plants may be utilized to assist in this problem is investigated. A multivariate latent variable method is proposed that uses data from both plants to predict process conditions for plant B for a grade previously produced only in plant A. The approach is illustrated by a simulation example.