Abstract
This paper provides a novel graph-based approach to the problem of operating procedure synthesis for a batch process plant. Knowledge about material conversion is represented by the material-conversion graph. Knowledge about plant structure is represented by the sequential plant-structure graph, which can deal with state transitions of the plant. These two graph representations enable efficient and flexible synthesis of detailed operating procedures by using a subgraph isomorphism algorithm. An example illustrates the applicability and potentiality of the proposed method.