A recipe management system executes a recipe on a piece of equipment in a process plant using one or more capabilities of the piece of equipment. A configuration system creates models of the capabilities, piece of equipment, and recipe and associates the capability models with the equipment model and recipe model. The recipe model can be used to execute the recipe on any piece of equipment with the capabilities with which it is associated. The equipment model can be used to execute any recipe that uses no capabilities other than those with which it is associated.