A management system for dynamic and interorganizational design processes in chemical engineering

Abstract

Design processes in chemical engineering are hard to manage. The design process is highly creative, many design alternatives are explored, and both unexpected and planned feedback occurs frequently. Thus, it is inherently difficult to manage the workflow in design processes, i.e., to coordinate the effort of experts working on tasks such as creation of flow diagrams, steady-state and dynamic simulations, etc. Conventional project and workflow management systems support the management of design processes only to a limited extent. In contrast, the management system AHEAD is designed specifically for dynamic design processes. In addition, AHEAD supports the management of interorganizational design processes. A subprocess may be delegated to a contractor, which receives information only about those parts of the overall process that are relevant for the contract. The management systems of the client and the contractor are coupled at run time such that both systems maintain up-to-date state information. The contract may be changed at any time according to the rules of a pre-defined change protocol. To validate this approach to the management of dynamic and interorganizational design processes, the AHEAD system has been applied to a comprehensive case study, namely the conceptual design and basic engineering of a chemical plant for producing polyamide 6.