Impacts of enterprise wide supply-chain management techniques on process control

In an effort to continuously improving business productivity, companies are adopting new practices towards a continuous optimization of the total enterprise in the areas of business processes, supply chain and plant life cycle. This trend is supported with the enabling technology for integrated enterprise systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) systems. With an ERP system, various types of information can be accessed in one system which allows us to do work flow reengineering more effectively. The accessibility of information from the lower layer (process automation/control) system such as process data to the upper layer (enterprise) system such as business data is critical for establishing an effective SCM system. This system plays a critical role for linking the enterprise and the control systems in optimizing the enterprise performance. In a chemical industry, the range of feasible operation regions that is set for the SCM system to find the best operation policy will indirectly depend on the ability of the process control system to perform in the range of operation regions. One of the requirements for an efficient production network is the ability to adopt changes in production operations with greater flexibility. This requirement will put a challenge on the process control technology. Meeting this requirement will allow for greater feasible operation regions set in the SCM study. Here, we discuss the potential impacts of a new trend in enterprise wide SCM practices on process control system in a chemical plant operation.