Survey of a General Theory of Process Modelling

Simulation is regarded as a strategic tool in the field of process development and process control. It is used to present certain aspects of an existing system, or a system to be developed, as models, or to reproduce them. It allows to examine systems which are too dangerous, too expensive or impossible to be tested. Precondition for simulation is the existence of a general or reduced process model which describes the important characteristics of the process with mathematical exactness. While in general process modelling it is in the foreground to collect and evaluate the knowledge on a certain process as completely as possible, in the reduced process model the boundaries of the process parameters are important. Such a process model has to be as exact as necessary within these parameters, while beyond the validity of these parameters exactness is of secondary interest. So as not to confine this introduction to process modelling to the technological, production-oriented area only, the introduced standardised term process model is now generalised as a brief outlook. A limitation in the area of nature is arbitrary and disadvantageous, hence one has to make an attempt to put process models in a systematic order in other areas, too.