Werner begins by recognizing the large number of CO-LaN members present at the Annual General Meeting: 27 members are represented out of the 53 members as of March 2006. CO-LaN has now seven Full Members and forty-six Associate Members. This represents a gain of eleven Associate Members since the Annual General Meeting held in Como, Italy. The Full Members are Air Liquide, BASF, BP, Dow, IFP, Shell and TOTAL. The Associate Members break down in the following categories:
- 28 software editors with AixCAPE e.V., BelSim, Caspeo, Chemstations, Honeywell, SimTech and SHMA as new members
- 14 universities with Max Planck Institute, SINTEF, The University of Tulsa, Zhejiang University as new members
- 2 U.S. Federal agencies
- 2 individuals
Then Werner states that the CO-LaN Management Board had monthly phone conferences and quarterly physical meetings, which dealt with the 5 missions of CO-LaN, votes for new members and general decision making. The Management Board has agreed on the following mission statement for CO-LaN:
Expanding Process Modelling Capability through Software Interoperability Standards
Regarding the management of Special Interest Groups, the Management Board has clarified the charters of the UNIT, Thermo and Interoperability Support SIGs. A Methods & Tools SIG has been created under the leadership of Bertrand BRAUNSCHWEIG with an initial focus on Microsoft .NET. The scope of the Refinery SIG (leader: Ignasi PALOU-RIVERA at BP) has been developed.
Werner thanks the numerous software editors who have awarded free licenses of their software to CO-LaN for test and demonstrations. He also mentions that Michel Pons Technologie has been contracted to fill the role of Chief Technology Officer while SHMA is contracted for the development of the CAPE-OPEN Logging and Testing Tool.
Werner reminds everyone that the Consultancy Service Scheme is up and running: there is still room to use it. Objectives of the scheme are both to assist developers and to secure CAPE-OPEN expertise where it exists.
In terms of marketing and dissemination, among other actions, Werner cites the publication of the 10th issue of the CAPE-OPEN Update and many participations to conferences: ESCAPE-15, PSE User Meeting 2005, ICheap-7, AIChE 2005 Annual Meeting, EUROKIN Workshop, WCCE 2005 (World Congress of Chemical Engineering). The 2nd US CAPE-OPEN Conference has been organized by NETL and attended by Bertrand BRAUNSCHWEIG and Michel PONS on behalf of CO-LaN. In addition, a substantial number of papers about CAPE-OPEN were published for example in Computers & Chemical Engineering Journal.
The CO-LaN website has been moved to a new hosting service with minimum disruption of service. A score of news posts have been published in 2005.
Standards maintenance and testing are discussed specifically during the 3rd CAPE-OPEN European Conference within the sessions held there.