A GRADUATE COURSE IN COMPUTER-INTEGRATED PROCESS OPERATIONS

Computer-aided process operations management includes tasks such as pr ocess monitoring, regulatory control, data reconciliation, unit and pl ant-wide optimization, process fault diagnosis, supervisory control, p lanning and scheduling. Due to the inter-dependencies of these tasks, operations management involves coordination of these tasks in an integ rated manner. The proliferation of disparate tools and techniques to c arry out these different tasks imposes barriers to problem integration by fragmenting the system implementation and the solution process. De aling with integration requires a careful choice of problem-solving pa radigms, knowledge representation, search and reasoning techniques so as not to burden the individual tasks and at the same time providing a unified framework. In this course on computer integrated process oper ations, we addressed the nature of these operational tasks, the charac ter of integration, the use of artificial intelligence, math programmi ng and nonlinear modeling techniques that are necessary and inevitable for achieving this integration. This course brought state-of-the-art tools and techniques and industrial speakers and case studies to the c lass room to educate and prepare undergraduate and graduate students i n current trends in computer-integrated manufacturing in the chemical process industries.