Product blends

Product exports can be automatically created as a product blend. A product blend is a blend of components targeted to a particular grade. Blends can only be made from assets which feed a blender, and must be made into a single final destination tank. Blends can be optimized in order to meet their target specifications with a number of different optimization modes, with the final grade target being the properties of the material in the destination asset after optimization.

Single blends can later be optimized across a time period using multi product blend optimization.

To open an existing product blend, right click on it in the Tabular or Gantt pane, and choose Product Blend and then Edit from the context menu. The blend opens in the Single Blend Inspector.

Tip: Once you have the Single Blend Inspector open, you can move between different product blends in time using the and icons in the toolbar at the top.

You can also view and edit all the product blends related to a particular asset from the Product Blends pane in the Display page. On that same pane you can create new blends and delete existing blends for that asset.

Simulate a product blend

Blend simulation is controlled by the Automatic Blend Simulation optional feature:

• If the feature is enabled, any edit to the blend triggers a simulation, as long as the portion of scheduling case needed to update the blend values has been simulated. You can still work on the blend while the simulation is running. Further edits stop the simulation and trigger a new one.

  Under these conditions, blends are simulated automatically even if the simulation for the full scheduling case is set to Manual.

• If the feature is disabled, you must simulate the blend manually by clicking the icon in the toolbar of the Single Blend Inspector.

When a blend needs simulating, values that may no longer be up to date turn red, and warning messages appear in the affected panes. Warnings also appear in the tooltips displayed when hovering your mouse pointer on affected cells.

Fill blend destination to maximum

You can fill the destination of one or more blends to maximum from the Gantt chart. Select one or more blends and right-click. Two options are available, as shown in the following image:

• The first option, explicitly mentioning the blend destination, works on a single blend, namely the one you right-clicked on.

• The second option works on multiple blends.

You can also fill the destination to maximum for one or more blends from the Product Blends pane. Select one or more blends and click the icon in the toolbar.

When you invoke the option to fill the destination to maximum for multiple blends, Schedule addresses the selected blends sequentially, filling each destination to maximum and simulating before moving to the following blend. Note that the option is disabled if the Calculate field for the blend is set to Amount in the Single Blend Inspector. Also, the operation is stopped and a warning appears in the following cases:

• The destination of the blend is not a valid tank.

• The destination tank does not have a working maximum specified in the Tanks page.

• The selected blends belong to two different target assets.

• The blend overlaps with other blends for the same asset, or would overlap after adjusting to fill the destination to maximum.

• The destination tank would overflow as a result of the operation.

The operation may be partially completed in the last two cases, depending on where the problem occurs in the sequence of selected blends.

Customize columns

The information available in the Single Blend Inspector is organized into several tables. You can fully configure each table to suit your workflow by moving, resizing, showing and hiding columns.

Note: The column configuration (widths, positions, visibility of columns) of a Blend Inspector is preserved after you close and reopen the Inspector, or Schedule. You do not need to save your case explicitly.
The internal layout of a Blend Inspector is not linked to a Display, but is common to all Blend Inspectors for the same type of blend. When you make a layout change in a Blend Inspector window, this is immediately reflected in any new Blend Inspector window for the same blend type.
These changes are local to your Schedule profile on your computer and are not shared with other users, even if you share your model. Similarly, if another user updates the Display and you get the updates via the Synchronize pane, the visibility, width and position of columns within the Inspectors are not affected.

Hide and show columns

Follow these steps to hide or show columns:

1. Right click on a column header and choose Manage Columns from the context menu. The Manage Columns dialog box appears.

2. If necessary, type in the Filter text box at the top of the window to show only the columns with names containing the text you entered.

3. Clear the check box in the Show column next to each column you want to hide. Similarly, select the check box near to each column you want to show. Changes are made to the table in real time.

4. Click Close once you have finished configuring columns.

Rearrange columns

You can rearrange columns in all tables of the Single Blend Inspector by right clicking on a column (not just the column header) and choosing either Move Column Left or Move Column Right from the context menu.

Alternatively, use the Alt + Left Arrow and Alt + Right Arrow keyboard shortcuts. This is especially useful if you need to move a column by several places.

To restore the default positions of the columns, choose Reset Column Order from the context menu.

The table in the Constraints tab works differently:

• To move a column, click and drag the column header.

• To show and hide columns, right click on a column header and choose Column Chooser from the context menu. Then drag column headers to and from the Customization window to hide and restore columns.

View and edit product blends

Add the Product Blends pane to a Display to view and bulk edit all the product blends related to a given asset. This pane also allows the creation and deletion of product blends. To open the Product Blends pane, click Product Blends in the Panes group of the Home ribbon tab.

From this pane you can do the following:

• Create a new product blend entry for the selected asset by clicking Create and then entering the new information.

• Edit a blend by selecting it and clicking Edit. The product blend inspector opens with the selected blend in the inspector.

• Delete one or more blends by selecting the blends and clicking Delete.

• Move the selected blends up or down in the list by clicking the arrow icons in the toolbar. Each selected blend moves by one position in the list. The blends are swapped in the schedule according to the new ordering, while keeping their original durations. Moving a blend is not possible in two cases:

  • The selected blend or the adjacent blend is linked to other blends.

  • The selected blend or the adjacent blend partially or fully overlaps with other blends.

• Fill the destinations of the selected blends to the maximum available and simulate. See Fill Blend Destination to Maximum for details.

Sell products

You sell a product by moving it from a product tank to an export feed. The product tank is the one you chose in the Destination Asset column of the Single Blend Inspector.

Export feeds are configured on the flowsheet and are feed units which are not connected to other assets in the flowsheet. Like other connections on the flowsheet, routing can be overridden between tanks and feeds.

To create exports of material, create a transfer between the product tank and an export feed. The type of material is determined by the grade of material in the tank. You can then configure the export via the Export Inspector.

A list of exports appears on the Exports page.

Tip: See also Generate Liftings for an alternative way to create and ship a product blend.

Configuration for blend feed manifolds

Make sure the Blend feed manifold support optional feature is enabled to let blends manage the configuration of the manifolds feeding them.

The feature is enabled by default.

When this feature is enabled, a blend applies an effective configuration to the feed manifold, overriding its default configuration for the duration of the blend. This has several advantages:

• When creating a blend, the underlying manifold configuration remains unchanged. The manifold configuration no longer splits.

• Moving a blend to a different time does not require changes to the manifold configuration, since the effective configuration now moves with the blend.

• Multiple overlapping blends no longer interfere with each other. There is no risk of data loss from one blend overwriting the manifold configuration.