Automation and data bases in an industrial laboratory

An integrated network of mini-computers has been developed to control small pilot units in a petroleum process research and development laboratory, collect process and analytical data from these units, reduce these data to the form utilized by the engineers and scientists, and place these data on a data base on a large central computer where it is interpreted and analyzed by the investigator using the computer language, APL. This distributed system was designed in-house by process engineers that were familiar with the operation of the unit. This system has had a large impact on the speed and reliability with which processes can be developed; the development time has been decreased by a factor of from 3 to 5, and the pay-out has been large.