Oil and Gas Interoperability Pilot

Oil and Gas Interoperability Pilot

by | Dec 11, 2014 | Automation, Interoperability, News, Operations Management, Technology

I started another Website called Physical Asset Lifecycle last year to discuss interoperability.

Two things happened. The reason to have a separate Website evaporated into the vacuum of failed business ideas. I also ran out of time to maintain yet another Website.

So, I will be reposting the work I did there and then building upon that work as an Interoperability Series.

There are key technologies and thinking when it comes to interoperability. The foundation is that we want to break silos of people and technologies so that applications can interoperate and make life easier for operations, maintenance and engineering. This will also improve the efficiency and effectiveness of operations. Much of the work so far is led by MIMOSA.

Interoperability demo

Two years ago, the foundation came together in a pilot demo at the ISA Automation Week conference of 2012. Here is the report from then.

After years of preparatory work, the OpenO&M Initiative participants organized a demonstration pilot project of information interoperability run like a real project building a debutanizer. It demonstrated the full lifecycle of the plant including all the facets of plant from design through construction to operations and management. The demonstration was held two days at the ISA Automation Week Sept. 25-26, 2012 in Orlando.

A panel of some of the people who worked on this project presented their work and showed live demonstrations.

One of the most important advances in the project was that now the three major design software suppliers–Aveva, Bentley, and Intergraph were all involved with enabling export of design data to a standard interface.

EPC for the project was Worley Parsons. Cormac Ryan, manager, Engineering Data Management, Americas, explained the development of the P&IDs using Intergraph’s Smart Plant P&ID generator. It produced a traditional P&ID. Not only a diagram, it is a database-driven tool containing lots of reports and data. The data was published in ISO 15926 format and made available to the rest of the team.

Jim Klein, Industry Solutions Consultant from Aveva, used a schema similar to the Intergraph one. It acted as a second EPC duplicating the data with the object-based database behind the drawing. It can store and link to an engineering database that contains much more data. For example, clicking on a pump diagram can show specifications and other important design information. This data was published out to instantiate the object in a maintenance management system or to create new data as it gets revised during the engineering process. Information can communicate to a “MIMOSA cloud” server.

George Grossmann, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Advanced Computing Research Centre, the University of South Australia, explained a transform engine using Bentley Open Plant received in 2 formats–owl and ecxml. These data go to iniSA 15926 transform engine. This engine takes input from all three suppliers, exports in ISO 15926 then to MIMOSA standard exports in CCOM XML.

Next up Ken Bever, with Assetricity and also CTO of MIMOSA discussed the transform from CCOM XML to the Assetricity iomog register, assuring that information was mapped to the asset and then sent to IBM’s IIC application in a standardized way. The information was then sent to OSIsoft PI historian. From PI, data is then accessible to maintenance management and operations management applications. All data references back to the ISO 15926 ontology.

Bruce Hyre, from IBM, explained how the IIC application is a standards-based platform that federates data and provides analytics. It takes CCOM, feeds it into a model server, which then provisions tags in OSI PI server. His demonstration showed the actual live P&ID from the EPC. He added, “But our focus is on the data supporting that P&ID–the tag list/model tree. You can subscribe to a tag, see information from the upstream systems.” Therefore the demonstration showed that data have gone end-to-end from design to the PI server to provision the tags with the live data from the design. 1092 tags were provisioned in this demonstration.

A video of the presentation can be found on the MIMOSA Website.

Program manager is Alan Johnston. Contact him for more information or to lend your expertise to the effort.

Manufacturing Operations Competitiveness Hot Topic at Siemens Summit

Manufacturing Operations Competitiveness Hot Topic at Siemens Summit

by | Jul 11, 2013 | Operations Management

I’m catching up on some travels after taking a long weekend for the Fourth.

Helmuth Ludwig

Helmuth Ludwig

At the end of June, I attended the Siemens Automation Summit in New Orleans. Previously, I wrote about Siemens new Customer Services Division based on conversations during the first evening in New Orleans. Watch for your Profibus News coming shortly for a report on the first new sugar refinery built in the U.S. in 40 years that made extensive use of Profibus DP and PA.

Smart Manufacturing

These conferences always kick off with keynote addresses and then attendees split off for specific training or information sessions. User Group leader Dennis Inverso, Principal Consultant at DuPont Engineering, set the tone for the week with a description of DuPont’s Smart Plant vision.

The vision begins with embedding intelligence at plant floor building into a knowledge-enabled enterprise. The point is that all business and manufacturing actions are enabled. Inverso distinctly stated that DuPont is implementing Smart Manufacturing. (see my report here, Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition and Smart Manufacturing Blog). They are in the first phase of front end loading the system to eliminate multiple data entry and then using virtual plant technology and engineering efficiency tools.

Manufacturing Competitiveness

Industry Week Editor in Chief Pat Panchak hosted a manufacturing competitiveness panel later in the week. U.S. CEO Helmuth Ludwig set the tone asking “How do we prepare our workforce for the new era of manufacturing renaissance,” “How do we retain all the knowledge that exists within the company now,” and “How do we manage through the entire product/technology lifecycle?”

Raj Batra, president of industry automation division for Siemens in the U.S., pointed to virtualization, lifecycle and science. Innovation is happening around about the intersection points of these. “Early adopters see 50% reduction in time to market.”

He continued, “Retention and attracting best and brightest people is a major problem given that there are no pensions that tie people to a company any longer.” Regarding recruitment, he pointed to Siemens Science Days that encourage kids in primary school to study science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Manufacturers need to recognize that aging infrastructure is a cyber security risk, is hard and expensive to maintain, and not as productive. Manufacturing needs to link to product design–to work together with PLM. “We’re doing that,” he said, “trying to make manufacturing a strategic part of an enterprise.”

Jerry Gipson, retired Senior Technology Director at Dow Chemical pointed to a skills gap to be overcome. ” We see more IT, more advanced skill sets required. This will be achieved through education and practice. We see and hear that companies are having difficulty filling jobs, yet many people still want jobs. They may not be matched to the positions. The big takeaway is companies and industry taking more responsibility to fill these gaps. We’re seeing some improved relations with academia.”

Gipson addressed the aging infrastructure point by noting technology is not a solution; it is incorporated as part of a solution. There are both a value promise and risk management aspect. But we need to consider how do we bring our solution to the business people in a context that they can understand the importance. We then must address sustainability of the solution. How do we keep it going?

Bonnie Knopf, president Intrepid Plastics and Intrepid Idea Innovators, SME Board member, noted “SME working on the employee problem by encouraging “geek groups” of employees to work with students. Companies need to pay for memberships of employees to get involved and allow them to attend trade shows and conferences to see what’s new.

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