Model for establishing theoretical targets at the shop floor level in specialty chemicals manufacturing organizations

Abstract The work in this paper introduces a model that focuses on three issues at the shop floor of specialty chemicals manufacturing. The three issues are cycle time of the process, production yield, and economic production capacity. This is in order to define theoretical performance targets that enable the process to operate with the highest possible output and minimum waste in terms of time, material, and resource. The basis for the proposed model is that the theoretical targets would be referenced alongside the actual process and results of will be compared to define performance gaps and identify improvement opportunities. Results from work in this paper will support benchmarking process, performance measurement, and also, the applicability of lean manufacturing on the shop floor of specialty chemical plants. This work has also demonstrated the proposed model as new effective tool to measure and benchmark performance of process plants.