Miller Magazine Issue: 122 February 2020

66 ARTICLE MILLER / FEBRUARY 2020 What has changed? The new approach to process design is the interaction amongst all systems, their interface and the streamline of functions and processes that take place from A to Z. By new design, an industrial process may need less equ- ipment, or better graded and selected equipment, consume less energy, be more efficient and work in a straight opera- tional line fully integrated. The algorithm to follow the path of the goods from raw material to final product evaluates every single step of the ongoing path, studying and analyzing each step in itself and designing the next one and the one after considering quantities, capacities volumes speeds and all other to be perfectly coordinated in the most efficient chain of process. THE PATH TO BE FOLLOWED Where does industrial planning start? Certainly with the buying ahead of the raw materials needed to produce our product, meaning with our commercial position, as it may be either long or short, most clearly if we are a flour mill and we produce an X amount of flour per year and we have not covered our needs in advance, our industry is “short” of the equivalent raw material to produce, i.e. We are at risk that prices may go higher and we may have to pay more for the wheat needed, or go down and hence we will sell our flour at a lower price…This is the first step of process design… The supply chain program, the shipping program that will satisfy the needs of our industry… Following the shipping program, it will need to be defi- ned the sizes and types of vessels to receive and to establish the break-even point between lower freight rates in larger vessels or financial costs to pay for smaller vessels to be received in more smal- ler shipments than one big shipment for various weeks or months…to be our finan- cial planning program…and from this to the receiving, berthing, unloading, conve- ying, storing, conditioning and finally into the milling process…but all of these will have to be consciously de- signed well before and well defined in order to have the highest possible efficiency to then proceed to the next step. Once the buying in of raw materials is completed, the logistics and the physical transport of goods will start to supply the industrial faci- lity, and it is at this point that functional efficiency comes in. Discharge: Applied design will calculate the amount of goods that will be received in each shipment, its volume, specific weight and from there the best way to discharge them, delicate goods as rice or durum wheat will be hand- led better by grab rather than with a CSU, and even less with pneumatic systems that will increase the breakage of the grains, other products may have less vulnerability and will be better discharged with a CSU system or with pneumatic equipment. Having this in mind the designer will calculate the correct power and capacity of the discharging equipment and then the receiving hoppers and conveyors belts to transport the goods to the initial storage. Initial receiving storage: The calculation to follow is the