Knowledge-based management of change in chemical process industry

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a knowledge-based system—management of change (MOC) expert­––for automating MOC in chemical process industry (CPI). MOC is the most important element in any process safety management (PSM) system. But accidents caused by improper MOC continue to happen due to human errors in the MOC procedure. To reduce the human errors, the time and effort involved in MOC, and make MOC more consistent, this system is developed to bridge the gap. MOC expert is not meant to replace the MOC team but to speed up the MOC process by providing consistent hazard review and relevant recommendations to control the hazards. The future work will be focused on addressing issues involved in other kinds of changes and integrating MOC expert with process/product-design tools. A simple case study, which is extracted from a waste-water­-treatment batch process, is used to illustrate the features of MOC expert.