Ciba's Bradford site is one of the largest and most productive plants in the UK, with an output of over 250,000 tonnes of which 84% is exported. Together with its sister plant at Grimsby, it manufactures products used to enhance industrial processing in various industries such as papermaking, mining, oil extraction, wastewater treatment and textile processing.
These sites form part of the Ciba group, a leading global speciality chemicals company which is dedicated to producing high value effects for its customers’ products. Highly innovative, Ciba brings new and creative thought to the processes and products of its customers in more than 120 countries.
Innovative process technologies are utilised to produce the advanced products made at these sites. To assist in improving understanding of the complexities involved, Ciba invested in the MS2 Process Diagnostics system and, with a team comprising inhouse technologists augmented by specialists from AJM Consulting, has developed models which highlight causes of process variability.
"Our production processes at Bradford and Grimsby are world class and highly innovative. We constantly strive to improve the performance of these multiple step processes and, to achieve this, a deep understanding of the chemistry and interactions of the individual stages is required. We selected the MS2 Process Diagnostics system from AJM Consulting to assist in this because of its visualisation tools and integrated analysis techniques within the system.
The ease of use of the MS2 system has been much appreciated by our highly qualified technical staff, who have been able to identify significant events that have been caused by subtle interactions further up stream. This has enhanced our understanding of our processes, enabling us to focus our improvement efforts on the critical areas in our plants. We see this as a key tool to achieve the next level of performance in our journey to operational excellence.”
John Barratt, Head for Process Innovation and Development Centre