A method for installing a distributed supervisory process control and manufacturing information application from a central software supervisory process control and management information system software deployment server to a remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), the application comprising hierarchically arranged objects (204, 206, 210) exhibiting hosted/hosting runtime relationships; the method comprising the steps of: first specifying a software module, referenced by an object of the hierarchically arranged objects, to be deployed to the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), the software module being identified, during the first specifying step, within a covering set of all software modules required to carry out the functionality of the hierarchically arranged objects, second specifying a destination (100, 102) for transmitting the software module based upon a distributed application configuration; determining whether the software module is already present at the remote location, the determining step comprising comparing, within the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), the covering set of all software modules required to carry out the functionality of the hierarchically arranged objects to software modules currently installed on the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), and identifying ones of the covering set of all software modules required to carry out the functionality of the hierarchically arranged objects that are not currently installed on the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), building a package of software modules based upon a message from the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102) identifying the software modules that are not currently installed on the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102); and transmitting to the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), after the determining step, the package of software modules for the distributed supervisory process control and manufacturing information application that are not present at the remote location; and deploying a configuration information, listing the objects that reference the software modules, for the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102) after the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102) has received and installed the package of software modules, thereby creating runtime instances of objects that define and govern operations of the distributed supervisory process control and manufacturing information application. first specifying a software module, referenced by an object of the hierarchically arranged objects, to be deployed to the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), the software module being identified, during the first specifying step, within a covering set of all software modules required to carry out the functionality of the hierarchically arranged objects, second specifying a destination (100, 102) for transmitting the software module based upon a distributed application configuration; determining whether the software module is already present at the remote location, the determining step comprising comparing, within the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), the covering set of all software modules required to carry out the functionality of the hierarchically arranged objects to software modules currently installed on the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), and identifying ones of the covering set of all software modules required to carry out the functionality of the hierarchically arranged objects that are not currently installed on the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), building a package of software modules based upon a message from the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102) identifying the software modules that are not currently installed on the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102); and transmitting to the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102), after the determining step, the package of software modules for the distributed supervisory process control and manufacturing information application that are not present at the remote location; and deploying a configuration information, listing the objects that reference the software modules, for the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102) after the remote supervisory control computer (100, 102) has received and installed the package of software modules, thereby creating runtime instances of objects that define and govern operations of the distributed supervisory process control and manufacturing information application.