Balancing quality and speed in chemical engineering operations. How do you find the optimal compromise?

What I did in the past was to evaluate for management what could be done process wise to increase throughput without sacrificing quality. I did a deep dive of all important process capabilities, then identified where the potential bottlenecks were. Then I ran mass and energy balances to predict changes at different throughputs. Then I proposed to management that we run a set of simple staged short production runs to find out where our process quality or capability would fall short. We worked with cross-functional teams to plan out the trials and just to ensure we knew how much more throughput we could get with the existing equipment. See what happened in the quality section

Once we ran the short term production throughput trials at known stepped increases, we had quality and production give us grades on all the quality results. It was surprising that the results got poorer at a certain point, but worsened differently as the throughput went above that point. Management was delighted that there was promise that a significant increase was potentially possible, and then assigned me two things to do, first work with the cross-functional team to identify if the somewhat higher throughput could be sustained with existing equipment or minor cost changes, and secondly what would it cost us to get xx % production increase.. See technology integration for what happened next.

By identifying potential risks early, you can implement strategies to mitigate them without sacrificing the pace of production. This involves conducting thorough risk assessments to pinpoint areas where quality may be compromised due to time constraints and establishing contingency plans. Proactively managing these risks ensures that processes run efficiently while maintaining high standards. The key is to find a balance where the speed of operations doesn’t lead to shortcuts that could affect product integrity or safety.

Training programs should not only focus on technical skills but also on instilling a mindset of adaptability and precision. When employees understand the importance of quality control alongside efficient processes, they are more likely to adopt best practices that maintain standards even under time pressure. A culture that promotes accountability and problem-solving encourages team members to take ownership of both quality and productivity, ensuring that operations run smoothly without cutting corners.

We proceeded after the initial trials to continue running one production line as our pilot line, and started running multiple products at increasing speeds. If a certain product ran fine at a higher throughput we asked management how many runs do they need to reset that product at those settings, then made the changes after we submitted samples and reporting. What we found is that some products could take higher throughputs than others. For the capital project upgrade, we did preliminary deep dives on all items and got sizing estimates together with the cross-functional team and then gave management estimates for increasing the pilot production line first, all other production lines. Management quickly funded one plant at a time!