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Product category: Enterprise Resource Planning software (ERP)
News Release from: Bentley Systems | Subject: ProjectWise Lifecycle Server
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial Team on 29 January 2007

Modeling the true nature of enterprise
operations

Rob Whitesell, Vice President of Bentley Plant explains how to meld efficient operating practices with prudent budget and cost management.

To achieve true efficiency in an operating facility, companies are beginning to understand that they must have visibility of the true nature of operations In other words, they need a model for the living, breathing, ever-changing process, conducted by man and machine, that extracts the crude, refines the fuel, or yields the chemicals

If this true nature of operations can be modeled, then all aspects of it can be analysed, scrutinized, and optimised for fiscal gain.

Operation and maintenance budgets in process plants are razor thin.

Success stories for management of these facilities are made by cutting costs and removing inefficiencies in the short term, not by launching major IT projects with the promise of future savings.

This reality has contributed to the poor state of engineering and technical data management in the typical operating plant - and it costs the industry millions in hidden costs.

The drive for cost reduction and better operating margins has revolutionised the front office and the business end of plant operations.

Today, management has sophisticated production reporting, tracking, forecasting, accounting, and resource planning systems that allow precise tracing of the operation of the facility - on paper.

Why has there been such a focus on implementing strong IT systems to control the front office? The answer is simple: to manage for greatest margin so we know exactly where money is spent and money is made.

Financial, production reporting, and ERP systems can deliver clarity and accountability to the flow of money in and out of an operating facility.

With these tools, management can achieve the first level of cost savings: a lean, mean operating facility on paper.

What the front-office systems cannot do is understand the business that they model.

An accounting package can provide the depreciation schedule for a given compressor, but it cannot help analyse why it provides operational advantages over its competitors in a given utilisation.

An ERP system can track the number of hours spent by operations engineers on performance enhancements, but it can't suggest ways of making them more efficient, or, for that matter, even provide a measure of their efficiency.

The daily production report can show trends in output, but cannot explain the dependencies of the process that drive its ups and downs.

Why is it that we can give an almost instantaneous response to a query on how much was spent during August for replacement pressure transmitters, but it takes days to track down the design limits that should be met if we want to upgrade a compression system? The cost savings achieved by consolidating vendor contracts in the front office can be wasted by inefficiencies in the engineering department in a matter of hours.

Sunk costs in professional salaries are simply accepted: they cannot be managed to any level of efficiency by front-office IT systems because they are just entries in a time card system and not a utilisable resource.

Downtime for maintenance or defects, suboptimal performance of equipment, expenses for revamp projects, rework, and recreation of basic engineering information - all these are examples of occurrences that front-office IT systems can only report on, but cannot predict, explain, or suggest a way to rectify.

Some would argue that control systems constantly monitor the heartbeat and vital signs of the plant.

It is true that current pressures, temperatures, and flow rates are a component of this "nature," but they are not the whole picture.

Even systems that work to optimise process based on real-time feedback do not capture the full essence of operations.

Control systems are great at measuring what is occurring, but they cannot explain how or even why.

The true nature of operations is not captured adequately by the maintenance system either.

Maintenance systems are very good at planning preventative maintenance schedules, tracking defects and problem logs, allocating adequately trained resources, and a host of other maintenance-related functions.

Their scope, however, is limited to relevant properties about maintainable equipment.

Most maintenance systems cannot even describe how equipment is connected together through piping, much less model the functionality of the plant.

Engineering plant design systems, drawings, 3D models, and document repositories contain components of what we are looking for as well, but no one system truly models the operating facility in a way that will contribute to fiscally smart management.

Unfortunately, if the answer for modeling the true nature of operations was a simple solution, it would have been delivered long ago.

This problem is complex, and conquering it takes foresight, planning, and perseverance.

Just as no one system can model the operations of the front office, no one system will model the operating plant either.

To solve this problem, however, we need a starting point - a place to hold the reference guide or the digital representation of the physical and functional facility.

In the front office, this reference point is the money trail (equipment is purchased, labour is paid, output becomes revenue).

In the operating plant, this reference point is the engineering backbone, the functional process itself, and the physical manifestation of the functional process into concrete, steel, piping, equipment, and manpower.

In order to serve as a true resource centre, DigitalPlant not only connects these silos of information, but also provides critical functions on top of these connections.

Where do you find the engineering backbone? It is easy enough to describe in layman's terms.

It is the entire infrastructure: the piping, the equipment in place, the knowledge of how it is connected, the interdependencies, and the plan for its function.

The technology for capturing the engineering backbone exists today in other segments of our industry.

Engineering data warehouses such as Bentley's ProjectWise Lifecycle Server have been deployed for years on projects by the engineering companies that design and build facilities and are increasingly being found on the owner side of major capital projects.

In capital projects, owners have traditionally justified the use of ProjectWise Lifecycle Server on the benefits around the handover of technical information from the contractor.

However, seeing a complete engineering backbone of the new facility can open eyes and minds to new ideas for modeling the true nature of operations, and forward-thinking owners are incorporating ProjectWise Lifecycle Server into operational IT systems.

This technology allows us to store a complete digital representation of the plant at the component level.

In a thorough implementation, the warehouse contains an entry for each component of the facility and all its relationships to other components, that is, what is it connected to, where it is located, what it is part of, what its parts are, and so on.

Physical location, functional decomposition, connectivity, design characteristics, manufacturer data, spare parts BOMs, and document cross-references are all found in standard technical data hand oversets in data warehouses delivered at the end of major capital projects.

However, this only scratches the surface of the utilisation of this technology in operations.

ProjectWise Lifecycle Server is a generic entity framework model and its ability to store interrelated information is limited only by imagination and perseverance.

Remember that the goal is to create a model for the true nature of operations so that it can be optimised for efficiency of man and machine.

How does ProjectWise Lifecycle Server help achieve this goal? First, it completely and efficiently captures the engineering data to create a backbone.

With the backbone in place, the other components we discussed can be placed in proper relation to each other.

The control system monitors the heartbeat and vital signs.

So why not provide two-way navigation between the equipment, sensors, and transmitters on the backbone to their real-time readings in the control system? Are you reading fluctuations in pressure in some part of the system? A quick look at data stored in the engineering backbone shows that an upstream pump is overdue for having bearings repacked and could be the culprit.

But wait, that information comes from the preventative maintenance schedule in the maintenance system.

It, too, can be simply and naturally connected to the engineering backbone found in the data warehouse.

In fact, the job of the maintenance system becomes much cleaner and easier to configure when extraneous engineering data is held in the data warehouse rather than in the record for a maintainable equipment item.

Change-control procedures are often found in dusty manuals on high shelves.

Why is it that everyone knows and follows the procedure and approval trail for ordering office supplies or planning travel, but haphazard decision-making processes contribute to production loss on a regular basis? It is simply this: We understand the model for procurement, but have never fully captured the model for the true nature of operations.

We can only control what we can model and understand.

With its engineering backbone and relationships to other systems, ProjectWise Lifecycle Server is the proper place for pragmatic, effective, and efficient change control.

Every change is a risk that needs to be managed, whether it is driven from the maintenance system, engineering, operations, or the front office.

The implementation of change control that takes into account all aspects of the operating facility applies rigor and accountability to the decision-making process.

We have control over who orders replacement printer cartridges - let's get control over decisions that affect a day's production.

Creating a digital plant is no mystery - it simply requires a vision of the resulting features and functionalities and adherence to a plan of action.

ProjectWise Lifecycle Server holds together all of the components of the true nature of operations and is the natural cornerstone of the implementation.

It is a proven and battle-tested technology in engineering design and project execution.

Operations and maintenance can learn and benefit from the experience of other segments of this industry, mitigating risk and lowering cost of implementation.

In either case, the people component of the equation must not be overlooked.

It does no good to provide a great set of tools, but no commitment to training and utilisation.

The implementation of DigitalPlant must fit into a natural means of doing day-to-day business functions if it is to be utilised.

Capture the engineering and functional information of the machine and teach the worker to utilise the model as an integral part of the business.

Change control, increased productivity, efficient resource utilisation, reductions in downtime - all these are within our grasp if we will only manage engineering information with the same fervor we show for our financial data.

Rob Whitesell is vice president, Bentley Plant.

Previously, he was president and CEO of ESSI, LLC, a company he co-founded in 1997.

ESSI's flagship product, ProjectWise Lifecycle Server (formerly known as eWarehouse), is widely recognised as the technology leader in the field of lifecycle information management.

During his leadership, ESSI cultivated close customer relationships with Chevron, KBR, Texaco, and BP, who deployed this technology in mission-critical roles.

Whitesell led ESSI through a number of significant events, including capital investments from Fluor and Bechtel and its eventual acquisition by Bentley Systems in January of 2004. Request a free brochure from Bentley Systems ...

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