What Is Strategic Asset Management for Arkema?

Overview

Arkema, a global chemical company headquartered in France, has decided to adopt a corporate approach to electronic document management for plant maintenance.  The process and associated software must support strategic asset management of the company with a high degree of innovation and continuous adaptation of its assets.

In a highly competitive economic environment, these changes should be optimized for both capital and operational expenditure.  In addition, the assets in question should also be able to support Arkema’s environment and societal commitments.  Following an investigation that included a pilot implementation, Arkema is likely to recommend using SAP DMS (optionally with Microsoft SharePoint or BlueCielo Meridian), across the enterprise to support increasing levels of asset complexity and organizational maturity.  The proposed solution sets are based on thorough benefit analyses and a consensus of global business process owners and IT experts.   The company found that BlueCielo Meridian Suite delivers most benefits in preparing turnarounds of complex units.  The company plans a structured roll-out to leverage the software investment.

A Growing, Innovative Chemical Company

Arkema was created little over a decade ago, with activities rooted in the chemical division of France’s historical coal company.  Via Atochem, subsequently absorbed by Total, Elf Atochem, and Atofina, the specialty chemicals were spun off from the petroleum major in 2004 under the name Arkema.  The globally operating company has three business segments: high performance materials, industrial specialties, and coating solutions.  Arkema, ranked in the top 100 Global Innovators for the fourth consecutive year, has revenues exceeding €7.5 billion.  The company has global goals to act responsibly with respect to safety, environmental footprint, individual and collective development of their personnel, and a commitment to an open dialog with stakeholders.  The company also targets acquisitions to complement its portfolio, mostly in emerging economies.  Arkema has set a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent in 2020, which exceeds the EU commitment; and achieved the targeted reduction of 20 percent of emissions of volatile organic compounds in 2014.

Strategic Asset Management

Arkema has a strategic approach to asset management, as evidenced by a presentation in 2014 at iframi, the French Institute for Asset and Infrastructure Management.  Arkema stated that its growth is based on the three pillars: innovation, targeted acquisitions and social responsibility.  For Arkema, this implies the company “cannot afford to make mistakes, whether it involves researching a new compound, or handling the end of life of the industrial installation.  This includes the responsibility to make the right investment choices, with the right timing, and the obligation to simultaneously optimize maintenance, production, and cash flow.  

Inherited Software Landscape

In the 1990s, Total implemented an electronic document management system (EDMS) for technical content.  The technology became obsolete and Total replaced the tool with BlueCielo Meridian.  The software installed at the company's Carling site was transferred with the site to Arkema when the company was founded.  When other sites started solving their technical document management and spending resources on a site-by-site basis, the Arkema board decided it was time for the company's ICT division to facilitate a global approach that also considered heritage.  

A Pilot for Mature Users

The many advanced users at the large, complex, Carling site have well-defined requirements.  Here, BlueCielo Meridian is being deployed next to SAP DMS.  Users at this site, which include both those who can modify engineering information and those who require access to the information, found the BlueCielo Meridian solution easy to use.  Usage has reached a high level of maturity; each department in the organization has defined its own document manager who is responsible for monitoring the document management process and guaranteeing the data integrity of those documents.

Benefit Analysis

Arkema gathered evidence from the pilot to build a business case to justify the investment in BlueCielo Meridian.  In maintenance, the company identified three areas of benefit:

• Document management
• Preparation of daily maintenance

• Preparation of a turnaround

In document management, Arkema identified time gains of from 25 to 75 percent compared to not using a solution. The solution's user-friendly interface, ease of searching, automatic tag reading, and bidirectional interface with SAP PM contributed to these gains.  The gains increase when the quality of the documents increase.  These efficiency gains are equivalent to one full-time-equivalent (FTE) employee per 6,000 documents per year, a level only realized at 20 percent of the plants. Arkema believes that the gains would pay for maintaining the system.

Arkema found an increase in maintenance quality and similar time savings when preparing tasks for daily maintenance.  These gains improved maintenance quality and saved time, enabling technicians to do other tasks, for which the value is difficult to quantify.  However, no sites have document management requirements that would be sufficient to enable these efficiency gains to translate into reduced workforce.

Arkema found substantial, quantifiable benefits in the preparation of turnarounds.  Mr. Lecler showed a video of a race track pit stop as analogous to what a plant turnaround is about: months or even years of minute preparations, executed at the highest possible speed, in the shortest time possible and with no latitude for error.  The company found it can save 20 to 40 percent of the cost of preparation, with benefits increasing for subsequent turnarounds.  Mr. Lecler estimates these gains would be between €500,000 to €1 million for a two-year preparation with 20 people for a turnaround at a large facility such as a refinery.  In a chemical plant, he estimates a gain of about 10 percent of those amounts.

Defining a Scalable and Economic Software Landscape

As the design principle for a global approach, Arkema would use SAP DMS wherever possible to limit software license cost and build a scalable solution set providing a range of functionalities for various types of requirements. ICT found there are several categories of users, depending on the requirements related to site complexity and size.

For complex sites and mature users as in Carling, Arkema is likely to propose SAP DMS combined with BlueCielo Meridian (“EDMS Full”).  As illustrated in the following figure, the two solutions complement each other.  For moderately complex sites and less mature users, ICT proposes SAP DMS in conjunction with Microsoft SharePoint (“EDMS Light”).  For smaller sites, no solution other than standard shared disk space and Microsoft Office would be required.

Strategy to Create Buy-In and Promote Usage

Rather than compete with each other, the “EDMS Lite” and “EDMS Full” solutions accommodate a gradual increase in the maturity of the users.  Guillaume Lecler, responsible for purchasing, maintenance and inspection in ICT, explained that he expects users to transition over time to more mature and involved solutions.  Once they start discovering possibilities, some will ask questions, express needs, and may want more advanced functionality. Mr. Lecler believes this is a better strategy than forcing every user to use a state-of-the-art tool, which runs the risk of causing frustration among users who are at an earlier point on the learning curve.

Arkema’s Development Suggestions to Increase Benefits

Arkema expressed a few suggestions for BlueCielo’s product development intended to benefit both parties.  Arkema’s priority is to make sure to attach only the necessary documents to the right maintenance work order.  This is because maintenance personnel find it confusing to receive documents that have no link with the tasks at hand.  As an example, annual vs. five-year inspections on the same piece of equipment would not have the same tasks or require the same documents.  This implies that different types of work orders need to be distinguished for an equipment type or maintenance activity.  When preparing work orders for maintenance or turnaround, document bundles are saved and reused for the next identical work order, creating further gains.  When the work order is sent, Arkema suggests the newest, up-to-date document release should be retrieved, reflecting the current plant state.  Other suggestions include providing tools for document managers, who manage documents, but do not change or consult them, and applying in-context predictive analytics to advise which documents could be needed.

"Warm Up" Lap

To prepare for the official decision and roll-out, Arkema established a global team comprised of business process owners and IT experts.  This team is likely to present a proposal to the board, recommending an “EDMS Light” to enable less advanced users to become comfortable with the technology and learn best practices; and an “EDMS Full," which would provide significant savings and leverage the SAP master data and process management.  Arkema's Carling site in particular is interested in experimenting with a new version as part of the rollout.  This would enable redlining and usage statistics.  The site would also like to test the recently released Meridan360 portal for external collaboration during engineering and maintenance projects.

According to Mr. Lecler, thorough preparation and making sure the roll-out is industrialized and optimized will be key factors to leverage the investment. From an information technology perspective, the infrastructure must be scaled and optimized to support volumes of data, be secure, and kept future-ready.  The process of document management should be streamlined across applications and a “Core Model” defined for each solution set to be rolled out.  This would be consistent with the SAP Core Model in place. 

Recommendations

ARC Advisory Group recommends a measured, rational corporate approach such as Arkema is using to design the solution sets.   Industrialized global roll-outs of integrated process solutions have proven to be effective (see case study).  In addition, to realize a positive outcome, ARC recommends that organizations prepare and involve the workforce to create a shared vision for using the new processes and tools.  A solution that fits Arkema, may not fit every process manufacturer.  However, the methodology applied could serve as an example.

This ARC report is based on our takeaways from an Arkema presentation made at a BlueCielo partner meeting.

 

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Keywords: Arkema, Asset Management, Document Management, Drawing Management, Engineering Information Management, BlueCielo, Solution Design, ARC Advisory Group.