The objective of this paper is to use production engineering concepts to solve scheduling problems encountered in chemical engineering. The studied case is the multipurpose (or job-shop) chemical batch plant involving the most complex specific constraints which can be found practically: various products to be manufactured, different synthesis sequences, presence of intermediate products, various storage policies, mass balances, utilities, effluent limitation,... The development of a discrete-event simulation model of a fine chemistry plant is proposed in this paper. Use of the model and simulation results are then analyzed. Attention is focused on applications which seem interesting from a production management viewpoint but also from chemical engineering concepts (plant design, effluent treatment, stability et storage of reaction intermediates...).
