Patent ID: 8160735

Claim:
A method of generating a general recipe that comprises process elements describing an industrial process that is not specific to a site at which the process is conducted and scale of operation, or to consumables, equipment or personnel employed in the process, from a master recipe that comprises process elements of the industrial process that is specific to the site and scale of operation or to consumables, equipment or personnel, the master recipe comprising records defining process elements forming the process, the method comprising: a) determining whether a process element of the master recipe is a support segment that relates only to resources assigned to the master recipe, the resources being consumables, material, or equipment used in the process, and generating a record in the general recipe for each process element of the master recipe that is not a support segment; b) for each process element of the master recipe that corresponds to a process element of the general recipe: (i) determining whether or not a process property of that process element is designated in the master recipe as a general property, and if so, calculating a process property value for that process property that is not specific to the site, scale of operation, or assigned resources, or prompting the user to input a value for the property, the process properties comprising properties relating to personnel, equipment, environment, materials and/or consumables; (ii) creating a record of the process property value so calculated or input; and (iii) repeating steps (i) and (ii) for each process property of that process element; c) determining whether the process element of the master recipe is associated with a record defining resource requirements of that process element, and if so, creating in the general recipe a record of a group of the requirements and of each requirement in the group; d) repeating steps a) to c) for each record defining a process element in the master recipe; e) determining scheduling relationships for a process element of the general recipe so generated by the steps of: (i) determining whether the process element is a primary process element whose scheduling is not dependent on any secondary process element, or a secondary process element whose scheduling is dependent on a primary processing element; (ii) if it is determined that the process element is a primary process element, then determining a process relationship of another process element of the master recipe with respect thereto other than any process element of the master recipe that is designated in the master recipe as a support segment; (iii) determining whether or not the processing relationship is designated in the master recipe as a general relationship that is not specific to any site and, if so, storing data defining the processing relationship in a process/dependencies record of the general recipe; and (iv) repeating steps (i) to (iii) for each process element in the general recipe.