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GENERAL INFORMATION

PROJECT OUTLINE

Project Description

Large and complex industrial systems are based more and
more on advanced Information Technology (IT) techniques.
Typical examples of such systems can be found in all
sectors of industry such as:
- chemical, oil, pharmaceutical or food industries,
- mechanical industry,
- transportation systems (car, railways, avionics or
space),
- telecommunication systems.

In all these sectors, advanced control of production of
plant operations is and has been one of the major
technological challenges in front of the complexity and
cost of final products, the increasing shortage of
skilled personnel and the competition with non-European
industries.

Production control has been helping the process industries
to counter these pressures supported by the continuing
rapid advances made by the IT and electronic industries.

Examples of the multiple benefits can be cited in terms
of:
- higher output,
- improved production yields,
- reduced energy costs,
- higher and more consistant product quality,
- lower staffing levels.

Recently, new promising techniques such as modelling,
signal processing, operational research, Artificial
Intelligence and neural computing have been used and
experimented with success on large cases. However,
the utilisation of advanced techniques has been made in
a specific way in areas where no other possibilities
exist or very important potential benefits have been
identified.

In other applications, where the development of highly
sophisticated specific techniques has no immediate
technical or economic justification, a very large market
exists for products which can provide the expected
services, if the cost of these products is reasonable.

The EUROPICON project aims at providing the process
industry with solutions incorporating the latest
technological developments of production control at a
reasonable cost. This will be achieved through the
definition of a product strategy allowing usage and
sharing of costs, development and maintenance in many
different sectors.

Technological Development Envisaged

EUROPICON will extend the substantial work done on advanced
engineering systems started during the 1980's. In
particular it will build on the current increasing
maturing of both production control and advanced
intelligent techniques that will allow better understanding
formulation, design and optimal resolution of intelligent
process control engineering.

The developed and demonstrated applications should permit
the acquisition of a set of methods and tools to compensate
for the shortage of highly specialised professionals and
the promotion of a new technology achieving better (from a
quality/performance point of view) management: user
friendly, safe and productive.

A further aim of the project is to allow the integration of
production control tools into the general production
management software, an important step towards global
systems for the management of information in process-
intensive industries.

EURIPICON will meet the following objectives:

- To survey, build-on and extend the available tools and
methods in both intelligent production control
environments and knowledge-based systems so successful
applications may be made. To compare methods and tools
serving different types of process control and identify
further developments to achieve industry requirements for
example:
* quality and productivity improvement,
* time and performance contraints,
* conflict resolution,
* avoidance of breakdowns and failures in the process.

- To identify and measure general and basic
characteristics of the process industry relevant to a
generic approach.
To identify and specify different process architectures:
major functionalities and dynamic behaviour, knowledge
flow and communication. These identifications will
allow the selection and development of a generic
computational model for production control system
operating in Real-Time and consisting of co-operating
intelligent systems.

- To conduct a number of experiments in order to identify
the proper behaviour and specific characteristics that
should extend generic results towards the application
level. To develop and apply methods and toolsets to
serve applications centres during testing and operation
phases. These application centres will be identified in
order to test the generality of the EUROPICON model:
continuous, discrete and batch production control and
telecommunication (a hybrid process) control.

- To define quality, performance and usability criteria
that will be used in the evaluation campaigns through
the project. To conduct and comment on the evaluations
which might indicate the need for further development
for the existing project tools and methods, and identify
new requirements and new kinds of advice that EUROPICON
products should be capable of giving to their users.

- To consider the needs of European industries at large
for intelligent co-operative computer-based systems for
production control. To perform knowledge dissemination
and transfer the results and technology of industrial
products to a wider community in Europe.

Market Application and Exploitation

The project addresses the market of control command systems
and, more particularly, the market of advanced production
control. EUROPICON should address approximately 20% of this
market, evaluated at 1,300 MECU in 1992.

Applications involved are in the areas of different
processes which need high-level, sophisticated control and
management.

Participant 1 of 7

Participant 2 of 7

Participant 3 of 7

Participant 4 of 7

Participant 5 of 7

Participant 6 of 7

Participant 7 of 7

FINAL REPORT

Report

Final Report received at ES: 4th June, 1997
Undated

Results in the project:
(Text in French).