Scheduling of production and logistics operations of steam production systems in food industries: a case study of the tomato processing industry

This study presents an optimization approach by mathematical modelling to support some of the main operational decisions in steam production systems with multiple industrial boilers. Decisions are related to boiler operations scheduling (start-up, warm-up and shutdown time), fuel replenishment (transportation and inventory management) and fuel composition consumed by each piece of equipment. These decisions are often taken based on practical experience of people involved, instead of any decision support tool using optimization techniques; as a consequence, unnecessary costs are likely to be incurred. The optimization approach is based on mixed integer programming and parameters experimental adjustment procedures. A case study of a large tomato processing plant in Brazil was carried out along 1 year using a 3-year database. Owing to the reasonably good outcomes achieved (annually potential savings around 10%), we consider the proposed approach as a suitable tool to support some of the key decisions in boiler scheduling and fuel logistics in steam production systems for tomato processing and other similar industries.