141 – Monthly conference call

10 NOVEMBER 2016

CO-LaN Management Board held its regular monthly meeting from 2 pm till 3:30 pm GMT.

Agenda:

  • Previous Minutes
  • Certification Proposal
  • COBIA Phase II Proposal
  • Associate membership applications

Participants: BASF (represented by Peter MAUER), BP (represented by Mick LEE), DOW (represented by Isaiah HUANG), Linde (represented by Oliver KOCH), Shell (represented by Richard BAUR), Michel PONS (CTO), Bryn STENHOUSE. Apologies received fom Air Liquide.

Outcome:

Previous miinutes

Minutes of the face-to-face meeting in October 4, 2016 were approved pending minor changes in the section on the membership renewal process.

Certification proposal

Oliver KOCH summarized the feedback received during the discussion session at the CAPE-OPEN 2016 Annual Meeting.

  • Proposal generally well received with no deep concerns expressed.
  • Software vendors present could see the benefits, especially from the test-suite.
  • Bronze/Silver/Gold levels of service agreement support for CAPE-OPEN would facilitate the take-up of a certification process for vendors of different size (small and large software vendors).
  • It will probably be necessary in 2017 to develop a technical proposal (under the consultancy service) from a suitable 3rd party for the development of a test-suite.
  • The certification terms and conditions should require software vendors to sign up to a collaboration group to facilitate interoperability testing.
  • The procedure for certification being withdrawn needs to be defined.

COBIA Phase II proposal

The final report on Phase I has been received from the M&T SIG. Software vendors have expressed strong interest in the proposal at the CAPE-OPEN  2016 Annual Meeting and in subsequent exchanges. The evaluations forms from the annual meeting have all been positive about the COBIA proposal.

  • COBIA will be made open-source. However CO-LaN will need to distribute COBIA with a code signature.
  • Any modification of the core COBIA software could break interoperability. It is important for CO-LaN to control modifications to the core software.
  • Different licencing schemes may be needed for the COBIA core software and the other COBIA components.
  • The COBIA licensing issue is still being discussed within the M&T SIG.

The COBIA phase II proposal was approved by a majority of the Management Board.

Associate Membership Applications

Two associate membership applications were reviewed:

  • The first is from a senior process engineer from India, Ramiz A. Momin. Ramiz has been modelling the Uhde Nitric acid production process with Aspen Plus and HTRI. He also works on refinery dynamic modelling with Unisim Design. This application was approved.
  • The second is from another engineer from India, Shaik Sadar Hussain. Further information from Shaik is expected before taking a decision on the application.

Next meeting of the Management Board is scheduled as a conference call on December 8, 2016.