Start hereNetwork

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warming up

The problem

start here

A glass furnace cannot be switched off. Each one here melts around 160 to 280 tonnes a day whether anyone wants the glass or not, and when a bottle line stops, the melted glass keeps coming and goes down a chute to be melted again. Bottler Glass Co. is an invented company with four plants, eight furnaces and eighteen lines, built so that every line, furnace and plant can be watched from one program, and every stopped hour can be seen in tonnes and dollars. Everything here is made up, and nothing here controls a real plant.

This page keeps to one order: first the problem, then the process in order, then what each screen is for, then where to start by role. A glossary at the bottom decodes every term used on any screen. If you have run a glass plant you can skip to the screens; the physics there is modelled in full, and nothing on this page is there to replace it.

The process, in order

each step opens the screen that covers it
  1. Batch house

    Sand, soda ash, limestone and recycled glass are weighed and mixed.

    Network & stock →
  2. Furnace

    The mix melts at about 1,590 °C and comes out as a continuous river of glass. It never stops. You cannot turn a furnace off for the weekend.

    Furnaces & energy →
  3. Forehearth

    A cooling channel that carries glass from the furnace to one machine and conditions it to forming temperature.

    Plant floor →
  4. Forming

    Blobs of glass are cut and dropped into moulds, then pressed and blown into bottles. Several containers at a time, several times a minute.

    Plant floor →
  5. Lehr

    A long oven that cools the ware slowly so it does not shatter. It takes about an hour, which is why a forming fault is found an hour after it started.

    Cold end & quality →
  6. Cold end

    Cameras and gauges check every container and reject the bad ones.

    Cold end & quality →
  7. Palletising

    Good ware is stacked, wrapped and labelled.

    Plant floor →
  8. Warehouse

    Pallets wait for a truck. Glass is bulky and cheap, so stock builds fast and costs real money to hold.

    Network & stock →
  9. Customer

    Breweries and food producers, ordering by the truckload against a forecast that moves.

    Planning →

The furnace running whether or not anyone is drawing from it is the single fact the whole thing turns on. A line that stops does not save glass. It converts it to cullet (recycled glass) at full rate, and that shows up on the plant floor within the hour.

What each screen is for

47 screens in 14 groups; open a group to read each one
Start here 2 screens
  • Start here

    This page tells the story in order: first the problem, then how glass is made step by step, then what each screen is for, then where to start by job. If you have never seen a glass plant, read it from the top.

  • Guided tour

    A ninety second walk through four ideas: the furnace does not wait for demand, losses are found at the level where someone can act, a job change follows the glass through the machine, and software detects while a person stays accountable. Pause at any step.

All plants 3 screens
  • All plants

    The whole business on one page: four plants, which of their bottle lines are running, how much glass each furnace melts and how much of it went down the chute to be melted again. Choose a plant to step inside it.

  • Asset base

    The long view of the furnaces: how far through its life each one is, which gets rebuilt in which year, and whether the network can cope with one being cold. A rebuild takes a furnace out of service, so the order matters.

  • Executive

    The business on one page for someone with minutes to spare: decisions waiting on you, pack to pull (the share of melted glass that left as saleable bottles), the money spent on remelting glass, the furnace rebuild horizon and the next furnace decision.

Regional departments 6 screens
  • Regional quality

    Quality for all four plants side by side. It shows how many bottles each plant rejects, which faults are turning up at more than one plant, and whether the inspection cameras at different plants judge the same bottle the same way.

  • Glass science

    Faults that start in the melt, furnace by furnace. A blister is a trapped gas bubble and a streak is a ribbon of uneven glass, usually from the furnace lining wearing away. Both come from the furnace, so they hit every bottle line it feeds at once.

  • Mould design

    Every mould set the business owns. A mould set is the matched group of metal moulds that shapes one bottle design. This screen shows how worn each set is and which designs keep producing bad bottles.

  • Procurement

    What the plants buy to make glass: sand, soda ash and limestone, bought in recycled glass, gas and power. It shows what is on hand, what it costs in each state and which silos are running low.

  • Regional forming

    Forming is the step that shapes molten glass into bottles. This screen compares how each bottle design runs on each machine across all plants, shows which pairings run badly and records what was tried.

  • Trace and complaints

    Follows a customer complaint back through the pallet, the date code and the job to the shift and the exact mould position that made the bottle. It also ranks holds by what they cost.

Planning and supply 3 screens
  • Planning

    Demand against days of stock for every bottle design across the network, and which lines are physically able to make each design. Diameter, weight and glass colour decide what a line can run.

  • Network and stock

    Where finished bottles are stored across the four plants, how many days of demand that stock covers, and how much is on hold and so cannot ship.

  • Stock and freight

    Where the finished bottles are. Each plant's warehouse is drawn as a column filled with its pallets, every truck on the road is drawn where it is now, and a table shows which bottles run out in the next two weeks if nothing changes. Select a state to zoom in. Below that is what delivery costs: a truck fills its floor with pallets before it reaches its weight limit, so freight is priced by the pallet.

Commercial 2 screens
  • Cost to serve

    Which customers and bottle designs make money. For each it shows the cost of making and delivering the bottle and the carbon emitted, which depends on the electricity grid where the furnace stands.

  • Reporting pack

    A sustainability report draft. For each topic (climate, water, recycled glass, safety) it asks two questions: does the business harm or help people and the environment through it, and does it affect the business's own money. Each answer carries the numbers behind it and a link to the screen that owns them. A person checks it and signs the report; this screen cannot.

The platform 6 screens
  • Nerve centre

    One connected view of the business, from a single line up to the whole network. It shows live signals, what the model has found and who owns it, with the numbers added up the way the plant is physically built.

  • Ask

    Type a plain question about the plant and get an answer with the working shown. The question is matched to a fixed set of calculations on the same numbers as every other screen, and no language model is called.

  • Learned model

    A simple linear model, fitted live on the running plant, predicts what each line should be producing. The gap between that prediction and what the line actually produces is the useful part, because problems show up there first.

  • Agents

    Standing checks that watch for conditions a person could miss. They are ordinary programs, not AI: each has a declared trigger, a limited view of the data and an audit record. They raise issues and propose actions, and a person decides.

  • Integration

    The connections this platform would need to a plant's existing systems, designed but not connected. It states what this platform owns, what it only reads, which system is the master record for each field and what happens when one is down.

  • Architecture

    How the platform is built: where the assumptions live, how the plant is regenerated in your browser from a seed, and why two viewers always see the same numbers. There is no server and no database.

Plant overview 3 screens
  • Plant floor

    The plant drawn from above with live numbers on it, from the batch house where raw materials are mixed to the dock where trucks load. Click a furnace, a forehearth (the heated channel that carries glass to a machine) or a forming machine to open it.

  • Control room

    The screen an operator watches in the control booth: live instrument readings, the targets they are held to and the alarm list. Colour appears only when something is abnormal, so a calm screen means a calm plant.

  • Shift reports

    What happened on each shift, drafted from the shift's own data and handed to the next crew. A person signs it. It opens on safety, then covers output, quality and what the next crew needs to know.

Production lines 4 screens
  • Line performance

    One bottle line from end to end in a single drawing: the forming machine, the lehr (the long oven that cools bottles slowly), the inspection cameras and the pack centre behind it. Select any machine to see what it is doing and rejecting.

  • One section

    One section of a forming machine, the single station that makes a few bottles at a time. It shows the moulds, the gobs (the measured blobs of molten glass dropped into each mould), the cooling and the timing that explain why one bottle comes out wrong.

  • Historian

    Recorded plant readings over time. By comparing a signal at the forming end with one at the inspection end, it recovers the delay between a cause and the moment the cold end sees it, and it declines to answer where the signal is too weak.

  • Findings and actions

    A register of what the model noticed, who owns each finding, what was done and whether the fix held. Software opens a finding. Only a person closes it, and that verdict is what the model learns from next.

Job life cycle 4 screens
  • Coming up

    A three week calendar of planned changes from one bottle design to another. It shows whether the mould set for each change is ready, the day each run becomes long enough to pay for its changeover, and when sets return from the shop.

  • Job on · prepare

    The briefing before a line changes to a new bottle design. It carries forward the settings from the last run of that design, the actions its review left open and the mould set going on, and lists what must be ready before work starts.

  • Job off · review

    The review done at the end of every run of one bottle design: what was lost against target, the three biggest faults and an action plan carried to the next run. Each run is judged against the band its changeover fell in.

  • Library

    The library of every bottle design this plant makes: which lines can make it, how many mould sets exist and where they are, and what each past run achieved. Each run shows pack to pull, the share of melted glass that left as saleable bottles.

Production support 3 screens
  • Pack centre

    The last part of the plant, where good bottles become pallets. It shows the conveyors feeding the machines that stack pallets, the wrapping stations, six driverless trucks, the warehouse lanes and the dock.

  • Department directory

    A directory of the departments that support the production lines, such as the store, the mould shop and forming support. Each has its own board, so choose the one whose work you want to see.

  • Mould shop

    The workshop that repairs and prepares moulds. It shows which mould sets are on a bench, waiting, fitted to a machine or ready in the store, and how much life each has left.

Engineering 6 screens
  • Electrical

    The electricians' board: which lines are down because of a power, drive or control fault, the motors and controls on the cold end and pack centre, and what has been calling the department out. Anything on a forming section belongs to the machine department.

  • IS machine engineering

    The board for the department that looks after the IS machine (individual section machine, the row of identical stations that shapes bottles). It lists every moving part past its service date, timing faults and stoppages in taking bottles out of the moulds.

  • Plant maintenance

    The board for the trade that looks after the plant's own equipment: compressors, water, the batch house where raw materials are mixed, and every conveyor. It shows what is out, what is overdue for service and which bearings are warning of failure months ahead.

  • Plant services

    The compressed air, cooling air, water and material handling systems that keep the glass moving. It shows what each is asked for, what is running, how much spare capacity exists and what stops if one fails.

  • Engineering directory

    The front door to the three engineering departments: electrical, the forming machines and general plant maintenance. Work goes to the department that owns the equipment and the skill, so pick the one that matches the fault.

  • Work orders

    Every work order the plant has open or has closed, coded the way a reliability engineer reads them. It also shows each line's next planned stop, when the line is stopped on purpose so repairs can be done, and the mould sets and shutdown requests behind them.

Furnace and batch 2 screens
  • Furnaces and energy

    A furnace melts glass day and night for ten to fifteen years and cannot be switched off. This screen shows how much each furnace in view melts, the energy it burns per tonne, how much recycled glass goes in and how far through its campaign (the years between rebuilds) it is.

  • The cullet loop

    The basement of the plant, where its own rejected bottles are crushed, sorted by colour and fed back into the furnace as cullet (crushed recycled glass). Each colour has its own conveyors and silos, because the colours can never be mixed.

Quality 2 screens
  • Cold end and inspection

    The cold end is where bottles are inspected after cooling. This screen shows what the cameras and gauges reject, how much of that was good glass, and whether the inspection machines still agree with each other.

  • Holds and tickets

    A hold stops a batch of bottles from shipping until someone decides what to do. Software raises a hold the moment a sample fails, and only a named person can release it. This screen lists every hold, how long it has waited and the tickets against it.

Planning 1 screen
  • Sequence and what-if

    The order of runs on each line, and what a change to it costs. Switching a line to a different bottle takes hours, sends glass down the chute and moves days of stock, and this screen prices those changes before anyone commits.

Where to start

by the job you would be doing

Shift manager

“What happened on my shift, and what do I tell the next crew?”

Production planner

“What should each line run next, and what does changing it cost?”

Quality

“What is held, why, and who can release it?”

Engineering

“What is going to break, and when can I have the line?”

Executive

“Where is the money going, and what is the carbon position?”

Whoever has to connect it

“What does this own, what does it read, and what happens when a system is down?”

Glossary

every term used on any screen
PTP
Pack to pull. Of all the glass the furnace melted, the share that left as saleable product. The number the plant is run on.
Pull
How much glass a furnace melts, in tonnes per day.
Cullet
Broken or recycled glass. Some is bought in and melted deliberately; the rest is your own losses going back round.
Cullet chute
Where glass goes when no machine takes it. A stopped line does not stop the furnace. The glass keeps coming and goes straight to the chute.
Gob
The measured blob of molten glass cut and dropped into the mould. Its weight sets the bottle's weight.
10 × 4 QG
Ten sections, four gobs: a machine with ten forming stations each making four containers per cycle. QG is quad gob; TG triple, DG double.
IS machine
Individual section machine. The forming machine: a row of identical sections, each shaping bottles in turn.
Mould set
The matched group of metal moulds that makes one bottle design. A job change needs a free set, and a set is in one place at a time.
Section
One forming station on the machine. They run in sequence and can be shut off individually, which is why a machine can be part-down and still running.
Section timing
When each move on a section happens, measured in degrees of one turn of its cycle. Each section is set separately, so they drift apart, and one firing two or three degrees off the rest makes bottles that differ from the rest.
Planned stop
A few hours every six to eight weeks when a line is stopped on purpose so the fitters can work on it. It costs packed bottles, which is why it is planned rather than taken whenever something wears out.
Needle and sleeve
The refractory parts at the spout where the glass leaves the forehearth. Changing them is the longest planned stop a line has, about a shift, every ten to twelve weeks.
Exchange pool
Spare mechanisms rebuilt in the plant's own workshop. A worn one comes off at a planned stop, a rebuilt one goes on, and the worn one is rebuilt for next time.
Cavity
One mould position. A cavity down is lost output that no one else makes up.
NNPB
Narrow neck press and blow. A forming process that makes lighter bottles than blow and blow, and is fussier to run.
Lehr
The annealing oven after forming. Cools ware slowly so it does not carry stress.
Job change
Switching a line to a different product. Moulds come out, moulds go in, and the line spends hours climbing back to speed.
Article / SKU
One product: a specific bottle in a specific colour at a specific weight.
Forehearth
The channel from furnace to machine. It is what couples the two, and it is where colour can be changed without changing the furnace.
Flint / amber / green
Clear, brown and green glass. A furnace makes one colour for its whole campaign, which can be a decade.
Campaign
The life of a furnace between rebuilds, usually ten to fifteen years.
SEC
Specific energy consumption: gigajoules of energy per tonne of glass melted.
Hold
A batch stopped from shipping pending a decision. Software can raise one automatically; only a person can release it.
B-double
An Australian truck configuration. The unit plants actually count despatch in.
Scope 1, 2 and 3
Where an emission happens. Scope 1 is the business's own: gas burnt in the furnace and the CO2 the batch gives up as it melts. Scope 2 is the electricity it buys. Scope 3 is everyone else's on its behalf, such as the trucks.
Double materiality
Two questions asked of every sustainability topic: does the business affect people or the environment through it, and does it affect the business's own money. A topic is reported if either answer is yes.
CO2-e
Carbon dioxide equivalent. Other greenhouse gases counted as the amount of CO2 that would warm the climate as much.
ESRS
European Sustainability Reporting Standards, the European rules for what a sustainability report covers. They are where the double materiality test comes from.
AASB S2
Australia's climate reporting standard. The largest companies must report against it, and it asks only how climate affects the business's own money.
Safeguard Mechanism
The Australian scheme that caps emissions at sites putting out more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2-e a year, with a cap that falls each year.
Entitlement
The water a plant is licensed to draw in a year.
Trade waste
Water a site discharges to the sewer under a permit. Here it is mostly what the cooling towers purge to keep their water from going salty.
Recordable
An injury serious enough to be counted in the safety statistics, as against first aid.

Bottler Glass Co. is fictional and every number here is simulated. The process, the constraints and the costs follow how container glass plants run, and the assumptions all sit in one file (src/sim/constants.ts) so they can be argued with.