S88 Part 1 Revised

As you may know from this, a new version of the ISA S88 Part 1 standard is out for vote. Will you be voting?

Now, speaking for myself, I would not like the revised version to be thrown away, there is useful stuff there. ButI would only like to see it published as a supplement to the original.

But please, don't make the Revised S88 Part 1 replace the original.

And of course it should be free, as should the original but that's another issue.

For me, the revised version adds little to the original, it does not make it simpler and it does not resolve some problems that have been evident since the guidelines were first published.

The revision has been prepared by a group of people that is smaller, less international and has a narrower perspective than the original team.

Much of the 3+ years spent revising the document have been spent re-arguing original issues and indeed re-learning what Part one really said.

I was to my delight accused of being an S88 purist at one point during the debate. I don’t think it was tended as a compliment, rather as a means of dismissing what I was saying as being eccentric.

The ‘standard’ is not a standard – it is about terminology and guidelines based on good, but not definitive models.

For me, the clarifications do not clarify, the diagrams are not improved and the models have only been restricted – that is not a good thing.

Most especially the revisions do not further the objective of making it easy to create recipes, and they do not help to improve control software.

Problems not resolved include:

What Recipe Equipment Requirements really are and how they relate to real equipment.

How Batches can be defined for Continuous and Discrete process

Actually I think all the problems are easily accommodated with the original, if you interpret it ‘Purely’. And avoid trying to use the procedural model in the physical domain.