PSE'97 / ESCAPE-7 : Conference Workshop

PROCESS OPERATIONS

Sunday 25 May 1997

Organized by Prof. Bjarne A. Foss and Ms. Catharina Lindheim, NTNU Final program

Most chemical engineers have traditionally been more concerned with the chemical process equipment and software systems than with the work of the operating organization. Now, this is changing: A new understanding is emerging that engineers need to take human, social and organizational aspects into consideration in the design and operation of chemical plants. There is empirical evidence that plants with few organizational levels and a high degree of self-organization perform better than the older and more hierarchical ones in terms both of safety, maintenance costs, flexibility, quality and regularity.

This workshop will focus on the interactions between technology and organization in chemical process plants. Key issues to be addressed: The role of automation as we move towards learning operating organizations. "Learning Support Systems" - beyond traditional decision support. Modeling the organization and the human work processes. Sociotechnical design.

The workshop will be a combination of invited lectures and contributed presentations, followed by a discussion. Industrial case presentations are particularly welcomed as contributed presentations. The invited lectures will include contributions from both Chemical Engineering, Cybernetics and from Management research. Results from the Norwegian cross-discipinary research program on integrated production processes - INPRO.

The number of participants will be limited.

Fee: NOK 1000 (lunch included)

More information on this workshop may be obtained from Prof. Foss, and abstracts of suggested contributed presentations should be emailed or faxed to him no later than April 1st:

Professor Bjarne A. Foss

Dept. of Engineering Cybernetics

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

N-7034 Trondheim - Norway

tel: +47 7359 4476

fax: +47 7359 4399

email: Bjarne.Foss@itk.unit.no

pseadm@kjemi.unit.no

Last modified: Thu May 22 16:09:26 MET DST 1997