Potential Benefits of Reverse Blending in the Fertilizer Industry

Abstract

Delayed differentiation, one of the key techniques of mass customization, has proven to be a high-performance strategy in the discrete industry. In the process industry, however, it remains poorly explored, especially when differentiation relates to product composition rather than form. Reverse Blending is a new OR blending problem based on a quadratic formulation, where output requirements are similar to those of classical blending, but here inputs are not preexisting and must be defined simultaneously with their use in the blending process while exactly meeting output requirements. These may then be used to obtain a wide variety of custom fertilizers (outputs) from a small number of Canonical Basis Inputs that can be blended outside the chemical plant, close to the endusers. This would avoid production of a wide variety of small batches of final products through a small number of large batches of intermediate products, resulting in valuable logistical streamlining and substantial cost savings. Accordingly, our paper investigates the potential benefits of implementing Reverse Blending in the fertilizer industry.