Abstract: System and method for optimizing polymer production scheduling. The system includes an input, operable to receive optimization input information, a model of a polymer production system including one or more transition models representing transition behavior of the polymer production system, an optimizer, operable to execute the model using the received optimization input information to generate an optimized polymer production schedule, e.g., by solving an objective function subject to constraints, e.g., to minimize/maximize costs/profits and/or to minimize order times, and an output, operable to output the generated optimized polymer production schedule, wherein the optimized polymer production schedule is usable to manage polymer production with a polymer production system.

Abstract: Adaptive control for a wide variety of complex processes is provided by an ANN controller with input and hidden layers having a plurality of neurons, and an output layer with a single neuron. The inputs to the ANN are a time sequence of error values, and the neuron paths are weighted as a function of these error values and the present-time process output. The present-time error value may be added to the output layer of the ANN to provide faster response to sudden input changes. The controller of this invention can efficiently handle processes with nonlinear, time-varying, coupled and variable-structure behaviors as well as process parameter and/or structure uncertainties. Large steady-state gains in the process can be compensated by attenuating the ANN block output.