Opportunities for Optimization in the Pulp and Paper Industry, 1992 Engineering Conference Proceedings
Optimization is more than just a series of incremental improvements. It is a powerful and under-utilized technique with a wide range of uses from data analysis to process modelling and control. It can even form a critical link in a mill-wide or corporate-wide computer integrated manufacturing, CIM, system. While optimization is a potentially useful tool, there are numerous organizational and technical hurdles which limit its use. The most common obstacle is the lack of consensus on the how to define the "problem" in terms of an appropriate objective function and constraints.
The goals of this review are 1) to explain the essential features of optimization theory, 2) to define the objective functions for various applications and 3) to discuss applications in areas of data analysis and control. As a specific example, the method is used to tune a model of a thermo-mechanical pulping system to fit process data.
Opportunities for Optimization in the Pulp and Paper Industry, 1992 Engineering Conference Proceedin