General Competition (November 1994)

Collaborative Decision Support for Industrial Process Control

Sponsor: Honeywell, Inc., Technology Center

• Project Performance Period: 6/1/1995 - 1/31/1999
• Total project (est.): $16,629,000.00
• Requested ATP funds: $8,148,000.00

Disruptions in industrial processes can result in costly accidents, such as explosions and fires, and other problems, including poor product quality, schedule delays, and damage to equipment. The inability of automated control systems and personnel to control these abnormal situations costs the U.S. economy at least $20 billion a year. Sophisticated automatic controls have been developed, but user support technologies are less advanced and are inadequate for handling the increasingly complex decision-making demands placed on supervising personnel. To remedy this problem, the Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) Consortium proposes to demonstrate the technical feasibility of collaborative decision-support technologies that can improve the performance of operations personnel. The project will require innovations in human-machine interaction, system architecture, and system configuration tools. More than 30 technology development studies will be conducted and the results applied to the development of decision-support prototypes. This technology will have applications in multiple industries ranging from petrochemicals to telecommunications to health care. Led by Honeywell, the ASM Consortium includes the U.S. operations of the seven largest petrochemical companies (Amoco, BP, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, and Shell), as well as Applied Training Resources and Gensym Corporation.

For project information:

Anne McCarthy, (602) 863-5586
mccramab@bbms.iac.honeywell.com

Active Project Participants

• Applied Training Resources (Spring, TX)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• B P (formerly Amoco Corp.) (Chesterton, IN)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• BP Oil (Warrensville Heights, OH)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Chevron-Texco Engineering Reseach & Technology Co. (formerly Texco) (Richmond, CA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• ChevronTexaco Engineering Reshearch & Technolog Co.(formerly Chevron Res.) (Richmond, CA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Exxon-Mobil Research & Engineering (formerly Exxon Research) (Fairfax, VA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Exxon-Mobil Research & Engineering (formerly Mobil) (Fairfax, VA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Gensym Corporation (Burlington, MA)
  [Original, Active Member]
  
• Shell Global Solutions (formerly Shell Chem. Co.) (Houston, TX)
  [Original, Active Member]
  

ATP Project Manager

Jack Boudreaux, (301) 975-3560
jack.boudreaux@nist.gov