Design of Optimal and Near-Optimal Enterprise-Wide Supply Networks for Multiple Products in the Process Industry

The optimal and near-optimal enterprise-wide networks are designed, that is synthesized, for supplying feedstocks and distributing multiple products manufactured from these feedstocks in the process industry by resorting to the graph-theoretic method based on process graphs (P-graphs). Such feedstocks and products, conveyed through supply networks, are invariably materials for which the law of mass conservation is universally valid. Moreover, any of the actions applied to or exerted on a given feedstock or product, transiting through the supply networks, will induce a change in at least one of its attributes, thereby transforming the feedstock or product. Examples of the actions are loading, blending, pumping, tracking, unloading, subdividing, and/or wrapping; and those of the attributes are chemical composition, physical state, flow characteristics, external appearance, and/or location. Thus, in the broadest sense, any supply network can be regarded as a process network. The feedstocks and the products m...