ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,468,295, issued on Nov. 11, was assigned to CHIYODA Corp. (Yokohama, Japan).

"Assistance method, assistance device, and assistance program" was invented by Hideki Sato (Yokohama, Japan), Shizuka Ikawa (Yokohama, Japan) and Motoki Irikura (Yokohama, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An assistance method comprising steps of: acquiring information related to a process or a reduced system when the process to be performed in a plant is performed in the reduced system with a smaller scale than the plant; and generating at least a part of a model for predicting a process to be performed in the plant, or an intermediate system with a scale be...