Process Systems Engineering Applications, Challenges and Opportunities in the Toll Manufacturing Industry

AbstractThere is a drive in chemical industries toward outsourcing many operations so that companies can effectively focus on their core competencies, and can rapidly acquire processing capabilities without setting up new facilities. This concept of toll manufacturing is based on a sharing‐economy model for on‐demand chemical production services. In toll manufacturing, the customer or consumer company provides raw materials to a toll manufacturer who then offers the rest of processing services. Due to distributed chemical production supply chains and decentralized nature of tolling model, a new set of challenges arise for both consumers and manufacturers. This article presents the prevalent applications of toll manufacturing in chemical industries, identifies key challenges of the sharing‐economy model, and highlights the opportunities and key issues of using process systems engineering (PSE) approaches to help toll manufacturing.