Orchestration of modular plants

In Modular Automation, the orchestration creates the link between process equipment assemblies (PEA) and processes towards operation. This paper presents a general methodology, so-called type-based orchestration, on how to design a fully functional modular process plant based on the module type package (MTP). In a number of discussion rounds, the steps were identified, generalized, and formulated as a method. Existing standards were applied to describe additional required information. The resulting phases and steps, as well as the practical application, have shown that a large part of the planning can be done using only the type-information of planned modules. The type-based orchestration is later completed with instance information. The methodology was tested against a modular distillation plant from the Technical University of Dortmund.