INNOVATIVE APPLICATION OF REAL-TIME PROCESS INFORMATION IN PETROCHEMICAL PLANTS

This paper presents the past and focuses on present use of real time p rocess information in petrochemical plants and refineries. During the past 20 years, technology has furnished tools to install increasingly sophisticated information systems to address the need of process and m anagement information. In general, older systems were costly to instal l, expensive to maintain, and failed to provide true application drive integration. Examples from operating refineries are presented in this paper to show how competitive pressures and re-engineering are yieldi ng innovative solutions to satisfy information need. As standard Micro soft-compliant tools are used coupled with standard hardware platforms , costs are plummeting while true integration of all process real time information is being achieved efficiently. A new paradigm, ''Function al User Interface'' (FUI) is replacing numerous home-grown GUls (Graph ical User Interface) to bring ''on time information'' with high resolu tion for sophisticated decision making. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.