The management and control of material flow forms the core of manufacturing execution systems (MES) in the petrochemical industry. The bottleneck in the application of MES is the ability to match the material-flow model with the production processes. A dynamic material-flow model is proposed in this paper after an analysis of the material-flow characteristics of the production process in a petrochemical industry. The main material-flow events are described

including the movement

storage

shifting

recycling

and elimination of the materials. The spatial and temporal characters of the material-flow events are described

and the material-flow model is constructed. The dynamic material-flow model introduced herein is the basis for other subsystems in the MES. In addition

it is the subsystem with the least scale in MES. The dynamic-modeling method of material flow has been applied in the development of the Sino MES model. It helps the petrochemical plant to manage the entire flow information related to tanks and equipments from the aspects of measurement

storage

movement

and the remaining balance of the material. As a result

it matches the production process by error elimination and data reconciliation. In addition

it facilitates the integration of application modules into the MES and guarantees the potential development of SinoMES in future applications.