AOC is a major global supplier of resins, gel coats, colorants and synergistic systems for composites and cast polymers. AOC in particular makes several classes of resin products which all contain an exothermic reaction at various points in the batch. Across all of those products, and across different manufacturing sites, product consistency is paramount to serving AOC’s customers. Additionally, aligning product consistency with best practices for exotherm control ensures maximum throughput and minimum use of additional energy in the reaction process. With the recent PI System upgrade, AOC had the tools available to identify and address these process inefficiencies. A corporate PI Asset Framework structure was configured to take advantage of PI Event Frames in order to compare the exothermic reactions occurring across all of the reaction vessels in the company. Early returns on this analysis include a 10% reduction in cycle time and 5% reduction in natural gas usage for one of the largest volume products that the company makes."
Speaker
Ryan Lenihan
Ryan Lenihan is the Corporate Optimization Engineer for AOC and has been with the company for three years. He graduated with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Florida. He has been the PI System administrator at AOC for the past year, and he recently guided the corporation through the upgrade of their six PI Systems.