"Improved energy and resource efficiency by better coordination of production in the process industries" (CoPro) addresses the call SPIRE 02-2016 and will make significant contributions towards

- efficiently utilising existing plants by integrated plant-wide scheduling and control;
- better coordination of connected units in a site and within a chemical park;
- buffering the effects of fluctuating renewable energy production and distribution by integrating demand-side response with plant-wide scheduling and control.

CoPro will provide tools for the plant-wide optimisation of continuous and discrete decisions, will develop technology for balancing production and consumption in industrial parks for industrial symbiosis and will address power plant scheduling and demand-side response.

We will develop online data analytics and novel forms of information presentation that lead to a symbiosis of operators and computer-based control algorithms. The solutions will be integrated into the IT infrastructure of the plants via a neutral integration platform that connects to different IT systems. CoPro will pay special attention to methods for the efficient development of plant models as the basis for advanced control, scheduling, and coordination.