Towards an ontological infrastructure for chemical batch process management

Abstract

Chemical batch process management, regardless of the level where its analysis is focused (such as pre-formulation and new process development, supply chain management, scheduling, process control, fault analysis, etc.) implies the collection and exploitation of huge amounts of data, which should be viewed as sources of information. Due to this, the information infrastructure which supports different activities by streamlining information gathering, data integration, model development and decision making is a crucial element for any effort for process improvement/optimization. In this work it is presented a Batch Process Ontology (BaPrOn), where different concepts regarding batch processes are categorized, and the relations between them are examined and structured. Properties and relationships are introduced in accordance with ISA-88 standard, which provides a solid framework for integrating batch-related information.