Patent ID: 7720727

Claim:
A system for use in a process plant, comprising: a first data source including economic data related to economic factors associated with the operation of the process plant; a second data source including process control data related to control operations within the process plant; a model that models the operation of the plant using the economic data and the process control data and that produces a model output; an application that uses the model output to perform a function with respect to the operation of the process plant; and an information server communicatively connected between the first and second data sources and the model, the information server including a router and a scheduler adapted to establish different schedules for delivery of information from the first and the second data sources to the information server based on different user profiles or different user configurations stored concurrently on the information server and associated with different users; wherein the first and the second data sources are adapted to automatically send the economic data and the process control data to the information server, as prescribed by the scheduler, via first and second messages and wherein the router is adapted to process the first and second messages to determine that the economic data and the process control data contained within the first and second messages is to be sent to the model and to automatically deliver the economic data and the process control data to the model.