Creating signed directed graph models for process plants

The identification of possible hazards in chemical plants is a very important part of the design process. This is because of the potential danger that large chemical installations pose to the public. One possible route for speeding up the identification of hazards in chemical plants is to use computers to identify hazards automatically. This will facilitate safe plant design and will avoid late design changes which can be very costly to implement. Previous research at Loughborough has concentrated on developing a model-based approach and an analysis algorithm for automating hazard identification. The results generated have demonstrated the technical feasibility of the approach. This approach requires a knowledge-base of unit models. This library of models describes how different plant equipment behaves in qualitative terms. The research described in this thesis develops a method for creating and testing the equipment models. The model library was previously achieved by an expert writing the models in a format that could be directly used by the system described above. An engineer unfamililar with the system would find this difficult. An alternative method would have been to use an intermediary (a knowledge engineer) to gather information from the engineer and convert it into the system format. This would be expensive. Both methods would take up a lot of the engineer's time. An engineer should be able to enter information personally in order to maintain efficiency and avoid information loss through the intermediary. A front end interface has been built to the system which enables an expert to enter information directly without needing to understand details of the application system. This interface incorporates ideas from the knowledge acquisition field in order to produce a tool that is simple to use. Unit-based qualitative modelling can lead to incorrect or ambiguous inference. The method developed here identifies situations where ambiguities may arise. A new modular approach is presented to overcome this type of problem. This method also presents a technique to verify that the models created are both complete and correct

An automated system for batch hazard and operability studies

A widely used hazard identification technique within the process industry is HAZOP (hazard and operability study). To overcome the repetitive and time-consuming nature of the technique automated systems are being developed. This work considers batch processes, in which material undergoes processing in distinct stages within the plant equipment items according to a set of operating procedures, rather than each equipment item remaining in a “steady state”, as is normal for continuous plants. In batch plants deviations which can lead to hazards can arise both from deviations from operating procedures and process variable deviations. Therefore, the effect of operator actions needs to be considered. CHECKOP is an automated batch HAZOP identification system being developed as a joint project between HAZID Technologies Ltd and Loughborough University. CHECKOP uses a state-based approach to HAZOP analysis. CHECKOP takes a plant description and a set of operating instructions as input and produces a HAZOP report automatically. The overall system architecture and the details of the major components of the systems will be described. Examples of incorrect plant operation along with the resulting output generated by CHECKOP will be shown. The advantages and limitations of CHECKOP will be discussed

Generating rules from data mining for collaboration moderator services

A Moderator is a knowledge based system that supports collaborative working by raising awareness of the priorities and requirements of other team members. However, the amount of advice a Moderator can provide is limited by the knowledge it contains on team members. The use of data mining techniques can contribute towards automating the process of knowledge acquisition for a Moderator and enable hidden data patterns and relationships to be discovered to facilitate the moderation process. A novel approach is presented, consisting of a knowledge discovery framework which provides a semi-automatic methodology to generate rules by inserting relationships discovered as a result of data mining into a generic template. To demonstrate the knowledge discovery framework methodology an application case is described. The application case acquires knowledge for a Moderator to make project partners aware of how to best formulate a proposal for a European research project by data mining summaries of successful past projects. Findings from the application case are presented

Towards a formal manufacturing reference ontology

Due to the advancement in the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), manufacturing industry and its many domains employ a wide range of different ICT tools. To be competitive, industries need to communicate effectively within and across their many system domains. This communication is hindered by the diversity in the semantics of concepts and information structures of these different domain systems. Whilst international standards provide an effective route to information sharing within narrowly specified domains, they are themselves not interoperable across the wide range of application domains needed to support manufacturing industry due to the inconsistency of concept semantics. Formal ontologies have shown promise in removing interpretation problems by computationally capturing the semantics of concepts, ensuring their consistency and thus providing a verifiable and shared understanding across multiple domains. The research work reported in this paper contributes to the development of formal reference ontology for manufacturing, which is envisaged as a key component in future interoperable manufacturing systems. A set of core manufacturing concepts are identified and their semantics have been captured in formal logic based on exploiting and extending existing standards definitions, where possible combined with an industrial investigation of the concepts required. A successful experimental investigation has been conducted to verify the application of the ontology based on the interaction between concepts in the design and manufacturing domains of an aerospace component

An ontology supported risk assessment approach for the intelligent configuration of supply networks

As progress towards globalisation continues, organisations seek ever better ways with which to configure and reconfigure their global production networks so as to better understand and be able to deal with risk. Such networks are complex arrangements of different organisations from potentially diverse and divergent domains and geographical locations. Moreover, greater focus is being put upon global production network systems and how these can be better coordinated, controlled and assessed for risk, so that they are flexible and competitive advantage can be gained from them within the market place. This paper puts forward a reference ontology to support risk assessment for product-service systems applied to the domain of global production networks. The aim behind this is to help accelerate the development of information systems by way of developing a common foundation to improve interoperability and the seamless exchange of information between systems and organisations. A formal common logic based approach has been used to develop the reference ontology, utilising end user information and knowledge from three separate industrial domains. Results are presented which illustrate the ability of the approach, together with areas for further work

An application of a rule-based system towards resolving exception events of business processes within a small Virtual Organization

The motivation behind this research work is explained first within the context of a European Union funded project called “SYNERGY”. A business scenario of a small virtual organization is presented to discuss what happens if exception events occur within the life cycle of a business scenario, and how they could be resolved to enable the business to operate successfully. To investigate these aspects, the paper briefly explores the role of events within the context of “Collaboration Moderator Services” which aim to increase awareness between collaborative partners during the workflow of a business scenario and then suggests a possible remedy through the use of a rule-based system. A description of a methodology adopted for creation and capture of knowledge needed to resolve the exception events, transform the captured knowledge into rule-sets and implement them in a commercial rule-based system – “XpertRule” is given. Screen shots of this implementation are provided in the paper. Based on this implementation, the paper then concludes with a discussion

An ontology for global production network design and reconfiguration

Organisations constantly seek to improve and fully exploit global production networks. This can be to provide more competitive solutions to customer requests, to exploit potential new technologies or to consider new business models based on the servitisation of products. To support such decisions requires the interchange and evaluation of information from a wide range of different and varied sources. This paper puts forward a reference ontology aimed at supporting businesses who seek to design, configure and reconfigure global production networks. The aim of this is to support interoperability between information systems within multi-domain contexts

Reference ontologies to support the development of global production network systems

In competitive and time sensitive market places, organisations are tasked with providing product lifecycle management (PLM) approaches to achieve and maintain competitive advantage, react to change and understand the balance of possible options when making decisions on complex multi-faceted problems, global production networks (GPN) is one such domain in which this applies. When designing and configuring GPN to develop, manufacture and deliver product–service provision, information requirements that affect decision making become more complex. The application of reference ontologies to a domain and its related information requirements can enhance and accelerate the development of new product-service systems with a view towards the seamless interchange of information or interoperability between systems and domains. This paper presents (i) preliminary results for the capture and modelling of end-user information, (ii) an initial higher level reference core ontology for the development of reference ontologies and (iii) the formal logical modelling of Level 1 of the FLEXINET reference ontology using a Common Logic based approach

An ontology for global production network design and reconfiguration

Organisations constantly seek to improve and fully exploit global production networks. This can be to provide more competitive solutions to customer requests, to exploit potential new technologies or to consider new business models based on the servitisation of products. To support such decisions requires the interchange and evaluation of information from a wide range of different and varied sources. This paper puts forward a reference ontology aimed at supporting businesses who seek to design, configure and reconfigure global production networks. The aim of this is to support interoperability between information systems within multi-domain contexts

Standardised semantic models to support the configuration of global production networks

The configuration and deployment of global production networks, raises questions about the interchange of data and information between varied and different organisations, domains and systems. Standards should be an instrumental part of forming a basis to enable seamless interoperability, yet there is no clear support for global production networks. This paper sets out a reference ontology for global production networks being developed as a basis for interoperability between systems, with the potential for it to be developed as a standard