Design, Analysis, and Debottlenecking
VirtECS is not a discrete event simulator. For this reason, it has a much wider operational envelope, it can handle more changes to a process model without requiring reconfiguration of the software. Examples include adding new parallel equipment, new products, and adding or omitting process steps.
If you cannot generate automated schedules for a multi-product plant, how can you have any confidence in your process design?
As early as the 1960s sequential modular simulators for steady state chemical processes demonstrated the value of modeling in plant design. Who today would design an ethanol plant using a spreadsheet? Yet, multi-product plants with batch and semi-continuous operations are still typically designed with no real consideration for scheduling. Even single product pharmaceutical processes can be so difficult to schedule that true production capacity remains an unknown quantity until actual operations begin. Performance of multi-product facilities under various product mixes remain a surprise, to be discovered by operations personnel.
Armed with a VirtECS Scheduler model of your process, you can quantitatively evaluate the performance of your process before it is built. Operational problems relating to bottlenecks, insufficient availability for storage of intermediates, and product changeovers are encountered and solved before the plant is built.
In existing plants, proposed process modifications can be studied and fine-tuned before investing in new equipment. This is critical in multi-product plants as bottlenecks can shift from one part of the process to another, depending on product mix.
VirtECS allows you to do for multi-product batch processes, what sequential modular simulation did for continuous processes 40 years ago.