Patent ID: 7680970

Claim:
A system for process control equipment arbitration in a process control system, the arbitration system comprising: a first batch executive operating on a first node and associated with a first process control area comprising a first set of process control equipment resources, the first batch executive comprising software stored on a computer-readable medium and operable to perform at least a portion of a batch process in the process control system; a second batch executive operating on a second node and associated with a second process control area comprising a second set of process control equipment resources, the second batch executive comprising software stored on a computer-readable medium and operable to perform at least a portion of the batch process in the process control system; and an arbitration service comprising arbitration software operable to: maintain a list of equipment resources, each equipment resource associated with either the first process control area or the second process control area, the use of which equipment resources is arbitrated by the arbitration service; receive from a one of the first and second batch executives a request from a user to use a particular equipment resource, the equipment resource located in either the first process control area or the second process control area; determine whether the particular equipment resource is available for use by the user; and permit or deny the use of the particular equipment resource by the user according to the determination of whether the particular equipment resource is available.