The present status of the chemical process industries indicates that rather than build many new chemical plants in the near future, more attention will be focused on the operation, improvement, and modification of existing plants, many of them of older design and of a multiproduct and/or batch nature. The stimuli for such growing concerns with operational issues are numerous and include: 1. heightened international competition for traditional markets resulting in increased emphasis on product cost and quality; 2. the availability of low cost computer technology, communications networks, and electronic instrumentation; 3. rapid progress in new methodologies such as expert systems, robotics, database techniques, and sophisticated man-machine interfaces; 4. the well-publicized efforts towards automation and computerized planning and operation in the discrete parts manufacturing industries. 5. recent international focus on safe operation of manufacturing facilities, especially those handling or processing hazardous materials. However, in spite of the rising prominence of plant operations as a subject for discussion and management concern, computer aided plant operation has not yet been given a high level of attention by the chemical engineering research community, either in industry or in academia. The academic training of chemical engineers continues to emphasize design at the almost toatl exclusion of operations. The purpose of this conference is to redress this situation by providing a forum for an in-depth review of the problems and needs in this new area of chemical engineering research and application and to thus stimulate research activity and encourage the introduction of operations issues in academic programs. This conference will be the first research conference focused specifically on the applications of computers and computer technology to chemical process operations. The attendees will meet for one week to assess the current status and future directions of computer integrated process operations. The overall plan is a program arranged into eight themes: process data acquisition and interfaces, process safety, operations planning, maintenance planning, process simulation, process optimization, plant networks and data bases, and expert systems in plant operations.
