1. Foreword

In the first article dedicated to the presentation of methods used in both scheduling and workshop design for process industries, we have taken stock of the main approaches adopted and which have led to the development of tools. The aim of this article is not to focus on the particular and comparative potential of different software products, but rather to highlight the essential points concerning the information that this type of tool provides access to, and which constitutes a decision-making aid for the practitioner.

The first illustrative example concerns the field of bioprocessing, using a protein production plant. We show some applications of a discrete-event simulator to describe the overall operation of the workshop. The simulator is then coupled with an optimization algorithm to determine design strategies. At the top level, the optimizer...