Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
Oil price volatility tied to over capacities has squeezed margins across the oil & gas industry, significantly reducing capital spend on major expansion projects, increasing the need to optimize existing assets, debottleneck plants, and take out cost across the board. To support these objectives, process and plant engineers need improved, easier to use process simulation tools that reduce engineering time and effort, increase design agility, and support emerging collaborative engineering approaches.
In the past, depending on the project phase (conceptual design, detail design, startup and commissioning, process optimization, etc.) and responsible party (process licensor, EPC, owner-operator, etc.) a variety of different engineering tools supporting either steady-state or dynamic simulation were typically employed, each with different models for process simulation, data entry requirements, and data and human interfaces. This increases engineering effort and cost and inhibits agility. It also prohibits effective use of concurrent engineering, which has been proven to reduce costs and help compress project schedules.
Increasing Engineering Design Agility
Each engineer works within a specific project engineering discipline and aims to produce the best possible design given the scope and requirements. Despite the apparent complexity in the division of the engineering scope in hydrocarbon processing facilities, most equipment design is non-proprietary and somewhat generic in nature, with unique proprietary technology usually associated with the processes themselves. In a typical hydrocarbon processing facility, all equipment downstream of the reactor is modeled by EPCs and engineering firms. In contrast, most process design packages are designed and modeled by the specific technology licensors, and then handed over to EPCs where subsequent equipment simulations are performed. Point solutions for engineering simulation and this waterfall approach to process engineering both contribute to higher costs and inefficient overall design. Different disciplines and even different teams within the same discipline all have separate models. The impact on the overall design is not known until later in the project, usually at the completion of a major stage gate.
Process simulation tools are typically used, with simulation accomplished over several iterations. While improvements are made at each state and to each equation, overall simulation is accomplished using a sequential waterfall process. Here, the isolated nature of the different design tools employed and the inability for engineers to collaborate during the design often results in sub-optimal process design. However, platform approaches allow the engineer to be agile when testing a design.
Cloud Provides Ubiquitous Infrastructure for Simulation
Users have been reluctant to take advantage of cloud services for process simulation applications due to security concerns. However, as they see how other industries (such as financial) are taking advantage of the Cloud, it will ease their concerns. In fact, cloud computing is ideal for some engineering simulation applications due to its extremely low price point, high security, and massive scalability.
Cloud computing benefits include eliminating the server architecture and entire network footprint. It is also highly scalable to meet users’ needs who are typically charged on usage but can also be charged with a more predictable flat rate. Cloud computing also supports data encryption to secure simulations over the Internet. The one downside, however, is that since customers cannot directly control network stability, they become highly dependent on the service provider.
The combination of ease-of-use, model customization, and available cloud deployment represents an important step forward in “democratizing” engineering simulation and making it agile enough for engineering firms and owner-operators to employ across the full asset lifecycle to support capital projects and ongoing plant optimization alike.
The economic landscape today requires owner-operators and engineering firms alike to leverage their global workforces as efficiently as possible to reduce cost and increase agility. Engineering platforms address this by allowing steady-state and dynamic simulation and optimization to be run not just on the same platform, but in the same process model. The new software also allows multiple users to access the same model simultaneously, regardless of time zone or geographical location. This enables simulation-driven, collaborative design to leverage engineering talent across organizations, as well as across the plant lifecycle.
For engineering firms and owner-operators to deliver successful capital projects or sustain manufacturing operations, they need to re-think process engineering processes and how simulation tools are used across multiple disciplines for different purposes. In the current climate of volatile commodity prices, capital projects are under extreme scrutiny to deliver faster ROI and reduce risk.
One key to business excellence will be changing the engineering workflow and creating a common “living” process model that multiple engineers and personnel from different disciplines can utilize at the same time from any location via the Cloud.
EPCs and owner-operators can realize the following benefits by using a unified engineering simulation platform:
In the past, depending on the project phase (conceptual design, detail design, startup and commissioning, process optimization, etc.) and responsible party (process licensor, EPC, owner-operator, etc.) a variety of different engineering tools supporting either steady-state or dynamic simulation were typically employed, each with different models for process simulation, data entry requirements, and data and human interfaces. This increases engineering effort and cost and inhibits agility. It also prohibits effective use of concurrent engineering, which has been proven to reduce costs and help compress project schedules.
Increasing Engineering Design Agility
Each engineer works within a specific project engineering discipline and aims to produce the best possible design given the scope and requirements. Despite the apparent complexity in the division of the engineering scope in hydrocarbon processing facilities, most equipment design is non-proprietary and somewhat generic in nature, with unique proprietary technology usually associated with the processes themselves. In a typical hydrocarbon processing facility, all equipment downstream of the reactor is modeled by EPCs and engineering firms. In contrast, most process design packages are designed and modeled by the specific technology licensors, and then handed over to EPCs where subsequent equipment simulations are performed. Point solutions for engineering simulation and this waterfall approach to process engineering both contribute to higher costs and inefficient overall design. Different disciplines and even different teams within the same discipline all have separate models. The impact on the overall design is not known until later in the project, usually at the completion of a major stage gate.
Process simulation tools are typically used, with simulation accomplished over several iterations. While improvements are made at each state and to each equation, overall simulation is accomplished using a sequential waterfall process. Here, the isolated nature of the different design tools employed and the inability for engineers to collaborate during the design often results in sub-optimal process design. However, platform approaches allow the engineer to be agile when testing a design.
Cloud Provides Ubiquitous Infrastructure for Simulation
Users have been reluctant to take advantage of cloud services for process simulation applications due to security concerns. However, as they see how other industries (such as financial) are taking advantage of the Cloud, it will ease their concerns. In fact, cloud computing is ideal for some engineering simulation applications due to its extremely low price point, high security, and massive scalability.
Cloud computing benefits include eliminating the server architecture and entire network footprint. It is also highly scalable to meet users’ needs who are typically charged on usage but can also be charged with a more predictable flat rate. Cloud computing also supports data encryption to secure simulations over the Internet. The one downside, however, is that since customers cannot directly control network stability, they become highly dependent on the service provider.
The combination of ease-of-use, model customization, and available cloud deployment represents an important step forward in “democratizing” engineering simulation and making it agile enough for engineering firms and owner-operators to employ across the full asset lifecycle to support capital projects and ongoing plant optimization alike.
The economic landscape today requires owner-operators and engineering firms alike to leverage their global workforces as efficiently as possible to reduce cost and increase agility. Engineering platforms address this by allowing steady-state and dynamic simulation and optimization to be run not just on the same platform, but in the same process model. The new software also allows multiple users to access the same model simultaneously, regardless of time zone or geographical location. This enables simulation-driven, collaborative design to leverage engineering talent across organizations, as well as across the plant lifecycle.
For engineering firms and owner-operators to deliver successful capital projects or sustain manufacturing operations, they need to re-think process engineering processes and how simulation tools are used across multiple disciplines for different purposes. In the current climate of volatile commodity prices, capital projects are under extreme scrutiny to deliver faster ROI and reduce risk.
One key to business excellence will be changing the engineering workflow and creating a common “living” process model that multiple engineers and personnel from different disciplines can utilize at the same time from any location via the Cloud.
EPCs and owner-operators can realize the following benefits by using a unified engineering simulation platform:
- Reduce total cost of process engineering
- Reduce the manual effort required to add additional equipment types, documents, reports, etc.
- Reduce the effort and skills required to modify the system to handle new objects or special situations and lower the cost of project engineering
- Reduce the effort required to train new users and maintain existing users
- Create an agile rapid response to project-specific issues to minimize project impact
- Enable engineering designs to be easily reusable as templates for future projects