Logo of Intelligen, Inc.Intelligen, Inc. was founded in 1991 to commercialize computer-aided process design technology that had been developed at the Biotechnology Process Engineering Center of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Intelligen, Inc. is now a high technology company that develops and markets software tools for simulation, computer-aided process design, capacity analysis, production scheduling, debottlenecking, environmental impact assessment, and project economic evaluation. Intelligen’s software tools serve the process manufacturing industries.

Jim PRENTZAS, its Senior Programming Manager, attended the CAPE-OPEN 2015 Annual Meeting at Shell in Amsterdam where he had the opportunity to meet and exchange with the CAPE-OPEN community.

On February 18, 2016, CO-LaN Management Board approved the application for Associate Membership by Intelligen with Jim PRENTZAS designated as representative of Intelligen in CO-LaN. At that time Intelligen, Inc. was actively looking into the opportunities offered by the adoption of CAPE-OPEN technology.

In August 2016, Intelligen, Inc. within the call for Consultancy Services requests opened then by CO-LaN, requested CO-LaN to provide them with sample code that would demonstrate the implementation of the functionality of loading and running external CAPE-OPEN Unit Operations in SuperPro Designer. This initial request was approved for funding by the Management Board on October 4, 2016. Since the request was made only for the delivery of sample code, the budget allocated was limited to 20 man-hours.

Through subsequent discussions with Intelligen, the initial request was amended and a revised scope for the consultancy action was developed. On September 12, 2017, CO-LaN’s Management Board agreed to finance this action up to 80 man-hours, i.e. 10,000 euros. Through this major effort, CO-LaN’s Management Board wanted to help Intelligen, Inc. in its adoption of CAPE-OPEN, while also widening and supporting the CAPE-OPEN community as well as getting software developers actively involved in developing their own CAPE-OPEN sockets and plugs.

The consultancy service was delivered by AmsterCHEM and consisted of:

  • a stand-alone Unit Operation socket, used as a DLL, capable to enumerate Unit Operations, instantiate a Unit Operation, connect/disconnect Material Objects to Ports, etc…
  • a driver application (command line type) that serves for testing and demonstrating how to implement the same in SuperPro Designer.
  • an implementation of the Thermo socket based on the Ideal Gas example by CO-LaN. Purpose is to show Intelligen how to provide their own thermo to the socket.

All these items were made generic so that they could be handed over to other interested parties. They were delivered to Intelligen Inc. by December 31, 2017.

Since the delivery of the code to Intelligen, Inc. by AmsterCHEM, CO-LaN has followed up with Intelligen about the implementation of the code in SuperPro Designer. The last update CO-LaN received was dated July 2018 with Jim PRENTZAS reporting slow progress with  implementing the Unit Operation Socket, apparently mostly because Jim was tied up with other projects. Jim stated then that “There’s no problem with the code delivered which is quite impressive and has helped a lot.“.

CO-LaN was unable to secure a presentation by Intelligen, Inc. on their implementation in SuperPro Designer at any of the CAPE-OPEN Annual Meetings held in 2018, 2019 and 2020. However, CO-LaN reported on the generic CAPE-OPEN Unit Operation socket at the CAPE-OPEN 2018 Annual Meeting.

On December 28, 2020 Intelligen, Inc. notified CO-LaN of their resignation of their Associate Membership. On January 14, 2021, CO-LaN Management Board approved the cancellation of membership by Intelligen, Inc.

CO-LaN is sad to see Intelligen Inc. leaving the membership and that the joint efforts to introduce CAPE-OPEN technology in SuperPro Designer have not been successful.