US 4,965,742 AGranted

Process control system with on-line reconfigurable modules

AssigneeE. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company

InventorRichard D. Skeirik

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Abstract

An integrated system for process control in which a process supervisor procedure (which is preferably the top-level procedure) is configured as a modular software structure with modules which can be revised by a user at any time, without significantly interrupting the operation of the process supervisor. Users can define or redefine modules by editing highly constrained templates. These templates use a standardized data interface (as seen by the user), which facilitates communications with an extremely wide variety of systems. The template set preferably contains highly constrained portions (which are optimized for the most common functions), and also contains pointers to user-customized functions. Thus, rapid set-up and modification are possible, but sophisticated users still have full flexibility to do customization.

Claims64

Dependent claims

A computer-based method for operating a substantially continuous process, comprising the steps of:

(1) operating the process with one or more sensors connected to sense conditions in materials being processed, and one or more actuators connected to change conditions in the process;
(2) controlling one or more of said actuators with a process controller in accordance with signals received from said sensors and in accordance with one or more control parameters;
(3) running a process supervisor procedure comprising one or more software modules, for selectively defining one or more of said control parameters for said process controller;
(4) selectively presenting a functional structure to a user, for a new software module for said process supervisor procedure and/or a functional structure corresponding to the user input from which a current software module of said process supervisor procedure was generated, and selectively loading the user input from said functional structure to be used by said process supervisor procedure;
wherein step (4) of presenting a functional structure includes presenting standardized data interface definitions further comprising the step (5) of enabling each said software module to perform the steps of
getting data from any one of a plurality of data collection and/or process control systems
and/or sending process control parameters to any one of a plurality of data collection and/or process controls systems
without the user explicitly defining any custom data interfacing procedures.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.