
Curvaceous Software Newsletter January 2003

Identifying Your Process'Sweet Spot' - just like Ineos Chlor

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In this issue:
  1. Identifying Your Process'Sweet Spot'
  2. New Users
  3. Forthcoming Events
     A. TAP Forum
     B. Manufacturing Excellence through Automation & Asset Management 
     C. Achema 2003
  4. Latest Papers
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1. Identifying Your Process'Sweet Spot'

Have you ever hit a wonderful shot in golf or tennis? The sort of shot where the club hits the ball with a precise 'click', the ball flies away seemingly effortlessly and then lands right on target? That can be described as hitting the 'sweet spot'. Finding that small area where many hundreds of different muscle movements come together in perfect unity is the unforgettable sensation that keeps many golfers addicted to the game for life. 

But sweet spots are not just restricted to golf. Your process operation has sweet spots as well. You recognise it easily when Yields and Efficiencies are high and product qualities good and you hope and hope that it will last. You know it must be some combination of the values of all the process variables but don't really know, any more than our golfer, how to reproduce them all at once and on demand.

Golfers and tennis players spend many hours practicing to try and identify their sweet spot and trying to remember the steps they took to achieve their perfect shot. 

Your process operators do the same with their process variables, they are practicing too and hoping that over time that they will learn the intricacies of the process and will then be able to stay in the sweet spot for longer and longer. 

Learning these process settings is long and arduous as it is difficult to remember exactly how the process was set-up or which of many variables was changed to discover information or to make an improvement. Operator guidance notes and alert limits are used to provide an assistance boundary within which to work. 

But what if you could SEE all of the various options? You could identify those that work and those that dont, then feed that new knowledge back to the process operators.

Curvaceous Visual Explorer (CVE) gives you that ability. It is, amongst other things, a multi-variable graph (you have only had graphs of less than 5 variables up till now) that needs no mathematical knowledge to use. You are able to visualise the process' behaviour to identify and define the different ways, or modes, in which the process operates. The Best Operating Zone (BOZ), which is our name for the 'Sweet Spot' is the mode or combination of modes that is most likely to produce good quality low cost product.

The exceptional investigative power of CVE really becomes apparent when you start to query the data. The powerful selectors available mean that hypotheses and null-hypotheses are now a thing of the past. A typical CVE query would be "How have we made good product?" "How were we operating when poor product was made?" or "Which combinations of process variable values leads to low yield?" It is this visual querying ability across many, perhaps hundreds, of variables that makes data investigation so much faster and easier to understand.

After you have found the Sweet Spot with CVE, you use the Curvaceous Process Modeller (CPM) to show the Sweet Spot to the Process Operator in real-time and to give him advice on which process variables to alter and by how much in order to stay in the Sweet Spot as external variables such as weather and feed composition change. CPM provides a Sweet Spot display for the process operator which uses only existing process and quality variables (these are predicted from process variables if they aren't measured online) so it is easily accepted. 

CPM models the process without the traditional first step of the user first having to describe the process with equations or rules. This makes it very simple to apply and use which in turn means that development and support costs are much lower than any previous method. CPM is affordable for applications across the whole spectrum of process industry from food processing and condition monitoring to oil refineries and petrochemical plants. 

If you are interested to see how well all of this works in a full-size plant then View the Slides given by Ineos Chlor and ourselves at recent conferences which describe highlights of the results of the first full-scale field trial. Ineos Chlor benefitted from:

	* 2% increase in overall Yield in the first 3 weeks of use

	* A six fold reduction of plant start-up times
 
	* Very early warnings of the existence of abnormal situations that would have caused irreversible damage if they had not been detected and corrected. 

This last was particularly significant as the cause was abnormal values of unmeasured process variables that were not in the CPM model or display. CPM deduced the existence of a problem from the interactions between other process variables that were in its model and display.   
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  To find out more 

about the power of CVE and how it can help you interrogate your data and identify opportunities or about the power of CPM in helping you capture the benefit of opportunities all the time. Contact us...

	Phone: UK and Europe +44 (0) 1753 893090
	Phone: North America  +1  203 270 1626
	Email: info@curvaceous.com

Visit our website www.curvaceous.com to see how Curvaceous can help you solve many more of  your problems!

OR take our product tour ...
http://www.curvaceous.com/Marketing%20Lit/TourAugust02/Tour%20Bulk/Tourbulk_files/frame.htm 

The tour introduces you to our new and existing products including CPM and CRSV and gives comprehensive process examples throughout. Pass this link on to your colleagues or invite them to subscribe to this newsletter for more information.

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2. New Users

We are pleased to welcome;

	**Dow Corning**
	**DSM Research**

to our growing family of Curvaceous users

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3. Forthcoming Events

  A. Curvaceous Total Application Programme (TAP) User & Research Forum

25 March, 2003
Gerrards Cross, UK

This event is restricted to Curvaceous TAP Subscribers and is strictly by invitation only.
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  B. Manufacturing Excellence through Automation & Asset Management

29th April - 1st May 2003
Teesside, UK

Organised by Emerson Process Management in partnership with Aker Kvaerner, Huntsman International, the ISA & the Carbon Trust
www.manufacturingexcellence.net
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  C. Achema 2003

19 - 24 May 2003.
Frankfurt, Germany.

We will have our own stand and our full range of products will be on display with Robin Brooks, Richard Thorpe and Bob McCafferty in attendance. We will also be presenting two papers in the associated Achema  conference. Europeans...come and meet us and get involved!

Visit. www.achema.de

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4. Latest Papers

Smart Fault Detection In Semiconductor Manufacturing
Part One: "Linking plasma process parameters to tool parameters and end-of-line results" 
http://www.curvaceous.com/Marketing%20Lit/Nehring/nehring1.htm
Ute Nehring and Andreas Steinbach, Infineon; and Robert McCafferty, Curvaceous Software, First Published in Micro, May 2002

Part Two: "Taking RGAs and Metal Sputtering Where Theyve Never Been Before"
http://www.curvaceous.com/Marketing%20Lit/Nehring/nehring2.htm
Ute Nehring and Andreas Steinbach, Infineon; and Robert McCafferty, Curvaceous Software.
First Published in Micro, July 2002"Copyright Canon Communications LLC, Used By Permission,"

