A case study in process engineering tool integration

• Published in: Computers & chemical engineering 1995-06, Vol.19, p.759-764
• Main Authors: Ballinger, Geoffrey H., Fraga, Eric S., Bañares-Alcántara, René
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Application Integration; Design Support Systems; Simulation; Synthesis; User Interfaces
• ISSN: 0098-1354; 1873-4375
• DOI: 10.1016/0098-1354(95)87126-8

One of the biggest problems facing the Process Engineering software industry is that of application integration - how to allow applications to be used together. Each application tends to stand alone and depend on its own private way of structuring data. From the engineer's point of view it would be better if all the applications co-existed within a common environment and information could be moved between them at will. We have approached this problem from the point of view of KBDS, a design support system for chemical plant design. KBDS would benefit from the use of other packages within the context of a design. One tool which attempts to provide a solution to the problem of tool integration is épée. It provides an application- neutral object-oriented view of process engineering data and applications. We have integrated KBDS with épée and extended it to make use of some of the tools which are available via épée. One of them is CHiPS, a flowsheet synthesis package. We have also integrated ASPEN PLUSTM into épée to make it available to KBDS. We discuss the issues related to the integration of tools into KBDS via épée and the requirements to support the use of high level tools in the design process.