Many of the industrial process deal with raw materials’ mixtures, processing or transformation. It means, some materials are mixed or processed in order to obtain the finished product, such as: steal, polymer, rubber, cement, ceramic, paints, coats, adhesives, resins, detergents, cosmetic, food and others. Many of them uses, since few to dozens of materials in the production process. When we use many raw materials, some problems may appear, such as:

•   The specification of the desired product is out of range, despite the raw materials’ properties are between limits.

•   The constant need to adjust the product’s formula during the batches.

•  Difficulties predicting the product’s properties.

•  Loss of control during the production.

•  It is necessary to make several laboratory analysis in order to specify the product.

•  The product engineering is a hard task, which requires too much time because there are many variables involved.

Why this happens?

Generally this problem happens because many raw materials are responsible for the same property on the finished product. This problem becomes more complex with the increase of the raw materials. This way, it is difficult to measure exactly how influence each variable has in the desired product’s property.

Beyond the raw materials, there are other process variables that can influence the finished product, such as temperature, pressure mixing velocity, gases and others.

How to solve this problem?