Formal Method of Communicating Operating Procedures

HAZOP is a widely-used technique for identifying potential hazards in process plants. However, the application of the technique is very repetitive and time consuming. One way to overcome this bottleneck is to develop automated hazard identification systems that emulate the HAZOP technique. Much of the research on automated hazard identification so far has concentrated on continuous plants by considering the causes and consequences of deviations from steady state. This work concentrates on batch processes where a batch plant moves through a number of different stages during operation. To safely produce a product in a batch process, a plant operator follows a sequence of operating instructions. In order for an operating procedure to be analysed by a computerized system it must be formally represented. Instructions written in natural language require complex analysis algorithms and their meaning may also be ambiguous. However, machine language is incomprehensible to humans. Therefore, there is a need to develop operating instruction formats that are both intuitive for humans and unambiguous for the computer. In this paper formal operating procedure templates are described. These templates can be used for writing a wide range of operating instructions. Examples of the templates in use will be given. On-going research problems are discussed.