Production planning, modeling and control of food Industry processes

Abstract

This book provides a new approach to the control of food transformation processes, emphasizing the advantage of considering the system as a multivariable one, and taking a holistic approach to the decision-making process in the plant, considering not only the technical but also the economic implications of these decisions. In addition, it presents a hierarchical structure for the global control of the plant, and includes appropriate techniques for each of the control layers. The book addresses the challenges of modeling food transformation processes, using both traditional system-identification techniques and, where these prove impractical, models based on expert knowledge and using fuzzy systems. The construction of optimal controllers for each of these types of models is also discussed, as a means to close a feedback loop on the higher-level outputs of the process. Finally, the problem of production planning is covered from two standpoints: the traditional batch-sizing problem, and the planning of production throughout the season. Systematic season-wide production planning is built upon the models constructed for the control of the plant, and incorporates market- and business-specific information. Examples based on the processing of various foodstuffs help to illustrate the text throughout, while the book’s closing chapter presents a case study on advances in the processing of olive oil.