Logo of Process Systems EnterpriseWithin the Expert Group Meeting organized by ICS-UNIDO on October 1-3, 2001 in Trieste, Costas PANTELIDES, both as Process Systems Enterprise Ltd and Imperial College London, gave a presentation (PDF, 4723 Kbytes) on CAPE-OPEN on October 2..

Costas describes the road to CAPE-OPEN, introducing the concepts of Process Modelling Components (PMCs) and Process Modelling Environments (PMEs) which are central to CAPE-OPEN. Then he lists four major developments in process simulation over the last decades:

  • Increasing emphasis towards integrated process modelling
  • Adoption of generic PMEs
  • Limited supply of generic PMEs
  • Increasing range of model-based applications

as well as the structural problems faced by process simulation. He concludes this part by stating that open software architectures address the key requirements which are general, effective and efficient mechanisms for incorporating new PMCs within existing PMEs and making models embedded within PMEs accessible to external applications.

He then describes the CAPE-OPEN standard as it stood in 2001 before providing his personal remarks which end with the statement that “The road towards open architectures in process engineering software is irreversible and CAPE-OPEN has already taken us more than ever before down this road”

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