CHEMICAL PROCESS MACHINE PROGRAMMING SYSTEM

The present invention provides an operation editor that includes a user interface for programming operations to be performed by a chemical process machine. Through the user interface the user may specify that one or more of the steps in an operation be variable. Such variable steps may subsequently be edited by the same or another user when the operation is incorporated into a procedure. Steps in the operation that are not variable are fixed and may not be edited when the operation has been incorporated into a procedure. Furthermore, individual fields in a variable step may be either variable or fixed. The present invention also provides a procedure editor that includes a user interface, which allows the user to edit variable steps within the procedure's operations. The procedure editor presents to the user for editing only those steps within the procedure that are variable.