Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The Badel project deserves a special mention. It involved both the technical
(power manufacturing) and management domains in a large combined heat-and-
power plant under development and a computer-integrated manufacturing and man-
agement system (CIMMs). The design and development team was very large,
involving about 100 designers. Several dozen of these designers attended the
Leading Designer 4's design classes. However, a downturn in the economy led to a
reduction in the demand for electric power and construction of the plant was halted.
When the economic situation improved, a group of Badel designers used the exper-
tise they had obtained from these classes to set up their own firm and successfully
develop the measurement and primary data processing systems for the Badel plant
under subcontract to a large international corporation.
A few years later another group of Badel designers obtained the commission to
design and develop the computer aid for the operator of the combined heat-and-
power- and power-generating units. They adapted the original Badel flow diagrams
to the QNX operating system. Thus, they designed and launched the ProSter sys-
tem, which was implemented successfully, by a small, privately owned firm now an
institute (IASE, the Institute for Power System Automation), in about 200 Polish
combined heat-and-power- and power-generating plants against severe competition
from the world's biggest corporations, which were trying to enter the Polish power
industry market. Where the designers were unsure of which option to use, they con-
sidered what Leading Designer 4 would do in similar circumstances (Kieleczawa
2013, private communication). It is always a matter of great satisfaction to good
educators when their students draw on and develop further their techniques and/or
apply them to obtain success in their careers.
Considerations of commercial confidentiality and the desire of large multina-
tional firms, in particular, to make enormous profits mean that it is generally very
hard if not impossible to find detailed information about the system design or the
approach adopted. It is therefore refreshing to see this information being made pub-
licly available with resulting benefits to the design of subsequent systems and their
users. For instance, after the successful launch of SAPI ODM, another successful
real-time implementation of the Odra 1325 computer was realised, namely, a com-
puter control system for research laboratory applications. The design was based on
the detailed SOSAPI flowcharts published earlier. There is an increasing expecta-
tion that the results of publicly funded research should be made publicly available.
It is to be hoped that this approach will also affect work financed by private firms
with a resulting benefit to society. This more ethical approach based on the distri-
bution of knowledge will probably require a move from competition to cooperation
as the dominant paradigm. However, it should not be assumed that the sharing of
knowledge will necessarily lead to disadvantage for highly competitive private
firms.
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