Service extraction from operator procedures in process industries

Procedures are a common knowledge form in process industries such as refineries. A typical refinery captures hundreds of procedures documenting actions that operators must follow. Maintaining the action-knowledge contained in these procedures is important because it represents a key organizational asset that can be leveraged to minimize the threat of accidents. We develop an approach that extracts services from these operator procedures. The paper describes the heuristics underlying this approach, illustrates its application, and discusses implications.