A Model-Driven Approach for A-posteriori Tool Integration

Abstract

The following section discusses the long-term approach of IMPROVE. We start with a careful analysis of current design processes in chemical engineering and their insufficient support by tools. Then, we sketch how new ideas from the engineering and informatics side can considerably improve the state-of-the-art. The resulting tools according to these new ideas are sketched in the next section.

It should be remarked that both, the long-term goals and the principal approach of IMPROVE [343], were not changed within the whole project period, i.e. – if also counting preliminary phases of the project – within a duration of 11 years. This stability of goals and approach shows that we have addressed a fundamental and hard problem which cannot be solved in a short period. It, furthermore, shows that the undertaken approach went in the right direction. Therefore, it was not necessary to revise the approach within the whole project period, neither in total nor in essential parts.

Collaborative Research Center 476 IMPROVE (in German Sonderforschungsbereich, abbr. SFB) is funded by German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, abbr. DFG) since 1997.

In this volume, we mostly speak of design processes. In other disciplines outside Chemical Engineering they are called development processes. Analogously, we use the term designer or developer.