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From data silos to data flow - part 1

10/19/2018

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In these two articles I’ll try to explain why and how a data flow approach between main systems during a plants lifecycle is far more effective than a document based handover process between project phases. I have earlier discussed the various information structures that needs to be in place across the same lifecycle. If you’re interested the list of articles is found at the end of this article.
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During design and engineering the different plant and product design disciplines authoring tools play a major role as they are feeder systems to the Plant PLM Platform. All the information coming from these tools needs to be consolidated, managed and put under change control. The Plant PLM Platform also plays a major role to document the technical baselines of the plant, such as As-Designed, As-Built, As-Commissioned and As-Maintained. See figure 1.
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Figure 1.

​When moving into the procurement phase, a lot of information needs to flow to the ERP system for purchasing of everything needed to construct the plant. The first information that must be transferred is released product designs, so Engineering Bill Of Materials. This is the traditional Product Lifecycle Management domain. The released EBOM says that seen from product engineering everything is ready for manufacturing and ERP can start procuring parts and materials to manufacture the product. Depending on the level of product engineering done in the plant project this can be a lot or just individual parts representing standard components or standard Parts.

The next information that needs to go to ERP is released tag information where the tag is connected to a released part. Here a typical example would be that a piping system is released with let’s say 8 pump tags and the pumps individual requirements in the system can all be satisfied by a generic part from a manufacturer. This would mean that in the Plant PLM system there are 8 pump tag objects that are released and they are all connected to the same generic released part. This constitutes a validated project specific demand for 8 pumps. At this stage an As-Designed baseline can be created in the Plant PLM platform for that particular system.
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This information must be transferred to ERP where it now means that procurement should place an order for 8 pumps and manage the logistics around this. However, seen from Project planning and execution it might be identified that according to the project execution plan several other systems are scheduled for release shortly which would make the order 50 pumps instead of 8. After communicating with affected stakeholders, it may be that it is decided to defer the order.
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Figure 2

As the order is placed together with information regarding each specific Tag requirement, preparation for goods receival, intermediate storage and work orders for installation must be made. This is normally done in an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system which also needs to be aware of the Tag’s and their requirements, physical locations to install the arrived pumps and what corresponding part definition the received physical asset is representing. All of this information is fed to the EAM system from the Plant PLM platform. As the physical assets are received, each of our now 50 pumps needs to be inspected, logged in the EAM system together with the information provided by the vendor and associated with the common part definition. If the pumps are scheduled for immediate installation, each delivered physical asset is Tagged as they now are installed to fulfill a dedicated function in the plant.
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At this stage the information about the physical asset and its relations to Tag, physical location, and corresponding part is sent back to the Plant PLM platform for consolidation. This step is crucial if a consolidated As-Built baseline is needed and there is a need to compare As-Designed with As-Built. Alternately the EAM system needs to “own” the baselines.
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Figure 3.

The next step is to make the Integrated Control & Safety system aware of the installed assets, and this will be among the topics for the next article.

If you want to know more about what kind of information structures and data that needs to be consolidated and flow between the systems, you can find more information here:

Plant Information Management - Information Structures
Archive of articles


Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by Wavebreakmedia Ltd  and purchased at dreamstime.com

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Data Integration – Why Dictionaries…..?

8/19/2017

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Most companies of more than medium size that does any engineering soon finds itself in a similar situation to the figure below.
The names of the applications might be different, but the underlying problem remains the same: Engineering data is created by different best of bread design tools used by different engineering disciplines, and the data must at some point in time be consolidated across disciplines and communicated to another discipline. This other discipline being procurement, project execution, manufacturing and/or supply chain.
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This article is a continuation of the thoughts discussed in an earlier post called integration strategies, if the full background is wanted.
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​As the first figure indicates,  this has often ended up in a lot of application specific point to point integrations. For the last 15 years, more or less, so called Enterprise Service Buses have been available to organizations, enterprise and software architects. The Enterprise Service Bus, often referred to as ESB is a common framework for integration allowing different applications to subscribe to published data from other applications and thereby creating a standardized “information highway” between different company domains and their software of choice.
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​By implementing such an Enterprise Service Bus, the situation in the company would look somewhat like the figure above. Now from an enterprise architecture point of view this looks fine, but what I often see in organizations I work with is more depressing. Let’s dive in and see what often goes on behind the scene.
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Modern ESB’s have graphical user interfaces that can interpret the publishing applications data format, usually by means of xml or rather the xsd. The same is true for the subscribing applications.
This makes it easy to create integrations by simply dragging and dropping data sources from one to the other. Of course, often, one will have to combine some attributes from one application into one specific attribute in another application, but this is also usually supported.
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So far everything is just fine, and integration projects have become a lot easier than before. BUT, and there is a big but. What happens when you have multiple applications integrated?
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The problems of point to point integrations have effectively been re-created inside the Enterprise Service Bus, because if I change the name of an attribute in a publishing application’s connector, all the subscribing application’s connectors must be changed as well.
How can this be avoided? Well several ESB’s support the use of so called dictionaries, and the chances are that the Enterprise Service Bus ironically is already using one in the background.

So, what is a dictionary in this context?
Think of it as a Rosetta stone. Well, what is a Rosetta stone you might ask. The find of the Rosetta stone was the breakthrough in understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs. The stone contained a decree with the same text in hieroglyphs, Demotic script and ancient Greek allowing us to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.
​Imagine the frustration before this happened. A vast repository of information carved in stone all over the magnificent finds from an earlier civilization…. And nobody could make sense of it….. Sounds vaguely familiar in another context.
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Back to our more modern integration issues.
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​If a dictionary or Rosetta stone is placed in the middle, serving as an interpretation layer, it won’t matter if the name of some of the attributes in one of the publishing applications changes. None of the other applications connectors will be affected, since it is only the mapping to the dictionary that must be changed which is the responsibility of the publishing application.
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If such a dictionary is based on an industry standard, it will also have some very beneficial side effects.
Why?
Because if your internal company’s integration dictionary is standards based, then the effort of generating information sent to clients and suppliers, traditionally referred to as transmittals or submittals, will be very easy indeed.

If we expand our line of thought to interpretation of data from operational systems (harvesting data from physical equipment in the field). Commonly referred to as IoT, or acquisition of data through SCADA systems, then the opportunities becomes even greater.

In this case it really is possible to kill two birds with one stone, and thereby creating a competitive advantage!

Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by Bartkowski  and purchased at dreamstime.com
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Digitalization - sure, but on what foundation?

4/7/2017

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The last couple of years I’ve been working with some companies on digitalization projects and strategies. Digitalization is of course very attractive in a number of industries:

  • Equipment manufacturers, where digitalization can be merged with Internet Of Things to create completely new service offerings and relationships with the customers
  • Capital projects EPC’s and operators, where a digital representation of the delivery can be handed over as a “digital twin” to the operator , and where the operator can use it and hook it up to EAM or MRO solutions to monitor the physical asset real-time in a virtual world. The real value for the operator here is increased up-time and lower operational costs, whereas EPC’s can offer new kinds of services and in addition mitigate project risks better.
  • Construction industry, where the use of VDC (Virtual Design & Construction) technology can be extended to help the facility owner minimize operational costs and optimize comfort for tenants by connecting all kinds of sensors in a modern building and adjust accordingly.
But hang on a second: If we look at the definition of digitalization, at least the way Gartner views it

“Digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business.” (Source: Gartner)

…The process of moving to a digital business….

The digitalization strategies of most of the companies I’ve been working with focuses on the creation of new services and revenue possibilities on the service side of the lifecycle of a product or facility, so AFTER the product has been delivered, or the plant is in operation.
There is nothing wrong with that, but if the process from design through engineering and manufacturing is not fully digitalised (by that I do not mean documents in digital format, but data as information structures linked together) then it becomes very difficult to capitalize on the promises of the digitalization strategy.
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Consider 2 examples
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Figure 1.
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Figure 1 describes a scenario where design and engineering tools work more or less independently and where the result is consolidated in documents or excel before communicated to ERP. This is the extreme scenario to illustrate the point, and most companies have some sort of PDM/PLM or Engineering Register to perform at least partial consolidation of data before sending to ERP. However I often find some design or engineering tools operating as “islands” outside the consolidation layer.

So if we switch viewpoint to the new digital service offering promoted to end customers. What happens when a sensor is reporting back a fault in the delivered product? The service organization must know exactly what has been delivered, where the nearest spare parts are, how the product  is calibrated etc. to quickly fix the problem with a minimum use of resources in order to make a profit and to exceed customer expectation to gain a good reputation.
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How likely is that to happen with the setup in figure 1?
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Figure 2.
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The setup in figure 2 describes a situation where design and engineering information is consolidated together with information regarding the actually delivered physical products. This approach does not necessarily dictate that the information is only available in one and only one software platform, however the essence is that the data must be structured and consolidated.

Again let’s switch viewpoint to the new digital service offering promoted to end customers. What happens when a sensor is reporting back a fault in the delivered product?
When data is available as structured and linked data it is instantly available to the service organization, and appropriate measures can be taken while informing the customer with accurate data.
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My clear recommendation is that if you are embarking on a digitalization journey to enhance your service offering and offer new service models, then make sure you have a solid digital foundation to build those offerings on. Because if you don’t it will be very difficult to achieve the margins you are dreaming of.
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Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by kurhan and purchased at dreamstime.com
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Plant Information Management – Operations and Maintenance

1/29/2017

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This post is a continuation of the posts in the Plant Information Management series of:
“Plant Information Management - Installation and Commissioning”
“Handover to logistics and supply chain in capital projects”
“Plant Engineering meets Product Engineering in capital projects”
 “Plant Information Management - What to manage?”

During operations and maintenance, the two main structures of information needed in order to operate the plant in a safe and reliable manner is the functional or tag structure and the physically installed structure.
The functional tag structure is a multidiscipline consolidated view of all design requirements and criteria, whereas the physically installed structure is a representation of what was actually installed and commissioned together with associated data. It is important to note that the physically installed structure evolves over time during operations and maintenance, so it is vital to make baselines of both structures together to obtain “As-Installed” and “As-Commissioned” documentation
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Figure 1.
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Let’s zoom in on some of the typical use cases of the two structures.
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Figure 2.
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The requirements in the blue tag structure are fulfilled by the physical installation, the yellow structures. In a previous post I promised to get back to why they are represented as separate objects. The reason for this is that during operations one would often like to replace a physical individual on site with another physical individual. This new physical individual still has to fulfill the tag requirements, as the tag requirements (system design) have not changed. In addition we need full traceability of not only what is currently installed, but also what used to be installed at that functional location (see figure 3).
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Figure 3.

Here we have replaced the vacuum pump during operations with another vacuum pump from another vendor. The new vacuum pump must comply with the same functional requirements as the old one even if they might have different product designs.
This is a very common use case where a product manufacturing company comes up with a new design a few years later. The product might be a lot cheaper and still fulfills the requirements, so if the operator of the plant has 500 instances of such products in the facility, it makes perfect sense to replace them when the old product nears end of life or have extensive maintenance programs.
 
Another very important reason to keep the tag requirements and physically installed as separate objects is if….or rather when the operator wishes to execute a modification or extension project to the plant.
In such cases one must still manage and record the day to day operation of the plant (work requests and work orders performed on physical equipment in the plant) while at the same time performing a plant design and execution project. This entails Design, Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning all over again.
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Figure 4.
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The figure shows, that when the blue functional tag structure is kept separate from the yellow physically installed structure we can still operate the current plant on a day to day basis, and at the same time perform new design on the revised system (Revision B).
This allows us to execute all the processes right up until commissioning on the new revision, and when successfully commissioned, the revision B becomes operational.
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This all sounds very good in theory, but in practice it is a bit more challenging, as there in the meantime might have been made change orders that effected the design of the previous revision as a result of operations. This is one of the use cases where structured or linked data instead of a document centric approach really pays off, because such a change order would immediately indicate that it would affect the new design, and thus,  appropriate measures can be taken at an early stage instead of nasty surprises popping up during installation and commissioning of the new system.

Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by nightman1965 and purchased at dreamstime.com
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Handover to logistics and supply chain in capital projects

12/12/2016

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This post is a continuation of the post “Plant Engineering meets Product Engineering in capital projects” and “Plant Information Management - What to manage?”
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As the last post dwelled on how EPC’s and product companies are trying to promote re-use in very Engineer To Order (ETO) intensive projects, we will focus on the handover to supply chain and logistics in this post.
The relationship between the tag containing the project specific requirements, and the article or part containing the generic product design constitutes a project specific demand that supply chain and logistics should know about. If both the tag and the connected part is released, a “signal” is sent with information regarding both the tag’s requirements and the part’s requirements.
​An exception to this rule is typically Long Lead Items (LLI). I’ve seen this handled via a special process that allows transfer of the information to supply chain and logistics even if the specific tag has not been released.
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Figure 1.
As the project specific information regarding all three tags and the intended use of product design is sent to logistics and supply chain it is possible to distinguish what tags need special attention and what tags can be ordered “off the shelf”.

Let’s say that tag: =AB.ACC01.IS01.VS04.EP03 is in a safety classed area and the other two are not. Information in the purchase order for the safety classed tag must then contain information to the manufacturer that documentation regarding the manufacturing process must follow the produced individual that will be used to implement this specific tag, whereas the other two deliveries can have standard documentation.
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Figure 2.
Figure 2 depicts that all three manufactured products or physical items with serial numbers come from the same Engineering Bill Of Material, but that the individual with serial number S/N: AL11234-12-15 has some extra information attached.
This is because since it is to be used in a safety classed environment, proof must be produced from the manufacturer’s side that the product fulfills the safety class requirements given on the tag. This could for instance be X-Ray documentation that all welds are up to spec or that the alloy used has sufficient quality.
As you can see, If the information is kept as information structures with relationships between the different data sets detailing what context the different information is used in, it becomes possible to trace and manage it all in project specific processes.
There are some other very important information structures that I mentioned in the post “Plant Information Management - What to manage?” like the Sales BOM (similar to manufacturing industries Manufacturing BOM), the Supply BOM and warehouse management, however I would like to cover those in more detail later in later posts.
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For now let’s follow the journey of the manufactured products as they move into installation and commissioning.

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Figure 3.
Provided that the information from the different structures and their context in relation to each other is kept, it is possible to trace perfectly what physical items should be installed where, corresponding to the tag requirements in the project (note: I’ve removed the connections from tag to EBOM in this figure for clarity).

We are now able to connect the information from tag: =AB.ACC01.IS01.VS04.EP03, the one in the safety classed area, to the physical item with serial number S/N: AL11234-12-15 that contains the documentation proving that it is fit for purpose in a safety classed area.
As the other two tags are not in a safety classed area, and have no special requirements, any of the two physical pumps can be used to fulfill the tag requirements, however we still want full traceability for commissioning, operations & maintenance.
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Figure 4
Since we now have a connection between the tag requirements and the physically installed individuals, we can commence with various commissioning tests and verify that what we actually installed works as intended in relation to what we designed (the plant system), and furthermore we can associate certificates and commissioning documentation to the physical individuals.
The reason for this split between tag object and physical item object I’d like to come back to in a future post regarding operations and maintenance.

Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by Nostal6ie and purchased at dreamstime.com
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Plant Engineering meets Product Engineering in capital projects

9/30/2016

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This post is a follow up of “Plant Information Management - What to manage?”.

It focuses on the needed collaboration between Plant Engineering (highly project intensive) and Product Engineering which ideally should be “off the shelf” or at least Configure To Order (CTO), but in reality is more often than not, Engineer To Order (ETO) or one-offs.
More and more EPC’s (Engineering Procurement Construction companies), and product companies exposed to project intensive industries are focusing hard on ways to  re-use product designs from one project to the next or even internally in the same project through various forms of configuration and clever use of master data, see “Engineering Master Data - Why is it different?”.
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However, we will never get away from the fact that the product delivery in a capital project will always have to fulfill specific requirements from Plant Engineering, and especially in safety classed areas of the plant.
If you look at the blue object structure, it represents a consolidated view of multi-discipline plant engineering. The system might consist of several pumps, heat exchangers, sensors, instrumentation and pipes, but we are going to focus on a specific tag and it’s requirements, namely one of the pumps in the system.​
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At one point in the plant engineering process the design is deemed fit for project procurement to start investigating product designs that might fulfill the requirements stated in the plant system design.
If the plant design is made by an EPC that does not own any product companies, the representing product is typically a single article or part with associated preferred vendors/manufacturers who might be able to produce such a product or have it in stock. If the EPC does own product companies, the representing product might be a full product design. In other words a full Engineering Bill Of Material (EBOM) of the product.
 
This is where it becomes very interesting indeed because the product design (EBOM) is generic in nature. It represents a blueprint or mold if you will, used to produce many physical products or instances of the product design. The physical products typically have serial numbers, and you are able to touch them. However, due to requirements from the Owner/Operator, the EPC will very often dictate both project and tag specific documentation from the product company supplying to the project, which in turn often leads to replication of the product designs X number of times to achieve compliance with the documentation requirements in the project (Documentation For Installation and Operations).​
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So, even if it is exactly the same product design it ends up being copied each time there is a project specific delivery. This often happens even if let’s say 40 pumps are being supplied by the same vendor to the same project, as responses to the requirements on 40 different tags in the plant design……
Needless to say it becomes a lot of Engineering Bill Of Materials in order to comply with documentation requirements in capital projects. Even worse, for the product companies it becomes virtually impossible to determine exactly what they have delivered each time, since it is different Engineering Bills Of Materials all the time, yet 97% of the information might be the same. The standardized product has now become an Engineer To Order product.
So how is it possible to avoid this monstrous duplication of work?
More and more companies are looking into ways to make use of data structures used in different contexts. The contexts might be different deliveries to the same project or across multiple projects, but if one is able to identify and separate the generic information from what information that needs to be project specific it is also possible to facilitate re-use.​
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​The image above shows how a generic product design (EBOM) is able to fulfill three different project specific tags or functional locations in a plant. Naturally three physical instances or serial numbers must then be manufactured based on the generic product design, but since we have the link or relationship between the project specific requirements (the tags) and the generic (the EBOM), one can generate project specific data and documentation without making changes to the generic representation of the product (the EBOM).
This approach even enables the product company to identify and manufacture one of the pumps which happens to be in a safety classed area in the plant design according to regulatory requirements without having to make changes or duplicate the product design, however more on that next time.
 
Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by Nostal6ie and purchased at dreamstime.com
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Managing Documentation For Installation and Operations

5/1/2016

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​In one of my previous articles “Plant Information Management - What to manage?”
I wrote about different information structures needed in a plant project from early design through commissioning and operations.
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The article left some questions hanging. One of them was: how can all this information be consolidated, managed and distributed to the various stakeholders in a plant project at the right time and with the right quality?
​Traditionally this has been called LCI or LifeCycle Information, at least in Norwegian oil & gas industry, DFI/DFO internationally or Documentation For Installation / Documentation For Operations. In short it is the operator’s requirements and needs for information from early design through engineering, procurement, construction and up to and including commissioning. The requirements are safety, regulatory and also requirements for information the operator finds important in order to control, monitor and guide progress of the project executed by the EPC.
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​As the figure describes, the operator drives expectation of deliveries in terms of standardization, safety & regulatory and expected documentation needed to operate and maintain the plant after commissioning. All stakeholders in the value chain must abide to these requirements, and it is the EPC who usually has the task of coordinating and consolidating this mountain of information. A successful commissioning includes that the operator confirms that it has received all documentation and information required to operate the plant in a safe and regulatory compliant manner. At this point the EPC is excused from the project.
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​In theory, the documentation handover would look like the figure above, however operators experience has told them that this seldom works well. Therefore a much more frequent information exchange is required between EPC and operator leading up towards commissioning. The main reason for this is that it enables the operator to monitor, check and verify the progress in the project. It also makes for a more gradual build-up and maturing of documentation in the project. For the EPC it means frantic activity to secure all required documentation from its own engineering disciplines, and all external companies in the projects value chain (see the pyramid in figure 1.) at each milestone.
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Traditionally a whole host of LCI Coordinators has been needed both on the EPC side, and on the operator side to make sure that all documentation is present, and if not, to make sure it is created…. The very “best” LCI coordinators on the EPC side manage to produce the information without “bothering” engineering too much. It has largely been a document centric process separated from the plant & product engineering process.
 
As long as EPC’s are only active in one country, this approach is manageable for them, however once they turn global, they find themselves having to deal with many different safety standards, regulatory standards and last but not least varying requirements and formats from different operators. Even product companies and module suppliers delivering to projects in different parts of the world experience the same thing.

In later years I’ve experienced more and more interest in leaving the document centric approach for a more data centric approach. This means that data is created and consolidated from various disciplines in data structures as described in the article “Plant Information Management - What to manage?”, and that the LCI process becomes an integral part of the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning processes instead of being a largely separated one.

 Of course there are varying strategies among companies when it comes to how much to manage, and how to hand it over.
  • Some create data structures in PLM like platforms, consolidates them, manage changes and transfer data to other stakeholders in the projects via generated transmittals. This is more similar to the document centric approach only more automated.
  • Some companies target re-use from project to project in addition to the aspects mentioned above by creating data structures in catalogs that can be selected in other projects as well. The selected data structure is then replicated in a project specific context and gets auto generated project specific information like tags and documentation.
  • Others again removes or reduces the need for transmittals and document handovers by letting the project stakeholders directly into their platform to work and deliver information there instead of handing over documents.
  • One approach was to not hand over documents at all, but simply give the operator access to the platform, link the information from the data structures as deliverables to the milestones the operator required, and then handing over the entire platform to the operator as Documentation For Operations after successful commissioning.

​Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by Norbert Buchholz and purchased at dreamstime.com
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Engineering Master Data - Why is it different?

11/21/2015

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Master data has in the last few years gained a lot of traction especially in ERP and CRM domains. One definition of master data is:
“Master data represents the business objects which are agreed on and shared across the enterprise”

source: "ENTERPRISE MASTER DATA ARCHITECTURE: DESIGN DECISIONS AND OPTIONS", Boris Otto & Alexander Schmidt, Institute of Information Management, University of St. Gallen
This means that master data can aid the flow of information through corporate processes across domains, and in this context also be seen as vital to the integration between different domains, departments and disciplines. That is if the entities and attributes can be agreed upon.

However, when I’ve worked with engineering companies and looked at engineering master data it has been very important for them to not only agree and decide on the entities (types of information objects), but also to agree on information structures as master data.

This means that for some engineering companies it is important to harness their collective knowledge, and make it available in the way they work (otherwise known as corporate processes).
Examples could be to identify “best of breed” designs, product breakdown structures or project breakdown structures in order to facilitate re-use. This is especially true in companies that have a presence in many countries and also execute their projects with resources from many different parts of the organization with different cultures.

Actually some of the companies that are most eager to push for this kind of master data are the ones that traditionally do Engineer To Order (ETO), that is to say they produce “one-offs”. There seems to be a growing awareness, that even if the project itself is delivered completely ETO, it would be very beneficial and cost effective if smaller parts of it could be standardized (identified as master data and published as such in a catalog for use in other projects and other parts of the organization).

A few weeks ago I participated in the pre-conference workshop at PDT Europe 2015. The topic this year was master data management. One of the conclusions was that it was believed that the biggest difference between product master data management and “regular master data management” was the kind of data that needed to be managed, and that it invoked a need for change management, common data models and governance.
It was also agreed that this need grew with products that have long lifecycles and high rates of service.
 
So what about you and your organization when it comes to engineering master data? Do you have any experiences, views or thoughts to share?

​Bjorn Fidjeland

The image used in this post is by Kineticimagery and purchased at dreamstime.com
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From digital archive to intelligent data

6/7/2015

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A lot of companies these days are working hard to turn their big digital archives into more intelligent data. These initiatives usually comes from some kind of digitalization strategy that has been formed to support a vision.

We see it every day, data is power, data can be analyzed, used in different contexts to support end customers, to sell new services or support internal processes in the company. 
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However, for this to happen it is not enough so simply store and manage data in digital format. The data must be “connected”, stored in object or information structures that represents the data used in different contexts. Coming from a PLM background, some of the aspects are quite easy to identify. From a product perspective you’ve got a requirements breakdown structure, maybe a model configuration or variant structure, an engineering bill of material that represents the design intent and supporting CAD structures from various design tools. All of the structures mentioned are being managed today as digital information, but very few companies have structured the information and put it all in context of the other information structures to achieve full traceability and change consequence control.

Note, I’ve so far only touched the product design aspect, so when considering the manufacturing intent (the manufacturing bill of material), the manufactured product, the sold product and the installed product the complexity grows, but so does the benefits of managing it all as connected data structures stored in context of each other. This data can be used to sell services to the end customers.

Examples could be a pump manufacturer who has full traceability on all pumps sold to different facilities. The pump manufacturer could offer services for maintenance of the pumps, and if the pump contains different sensors, the manufacturer could also analyze operational data to schedule preventive maintenance. This data could then serve as valuable input to the design processes of new and even better pumps. As a consequence of the fact that all data structures are connected, the pump manufacturer knows the location of all pumps sold, and can offer the new and improved model not only to all customers, but to all customers and all the locations for each customer.

All of a sudden we are touching one of the biggest fashion words these days “the Internet Of Things”, because what would happen if a large portion of the pumps were installed on ships and they contained sensors? The pump manufacturer could set up maintenance offices in large ports. Knowing exactly what pumps would arrive in what ports, at what times and what maintenance need they have would allow the manufacturer or service provider to order the right spare parts just in time and to reduce the maintenance time. This would minimize the risk of fines by the ship owners because the ship had to stay in port longer than scheduled or even worse, having the service personnel performing the service at sea and thereby leaving the service office in the port severely under manned.

This is only one example of the power of “connected data” or digitalization. Quite a few companies have similar business models as our pump manufacturer, but very few have the opportunity to utilize the services by “connected data”. Instead there are a lot of manual work, interpretation and searching for data in different digital archives. This in turn leads to errors, misunderstandings and lost business opportunities.

 Some points to ponder

Bjorn Fidjeland


All images used in this post are purchased at dreamstime.com
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VDC, is that like PLM for construction industry?

5/17/2015

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VDC (Virtual Design & Construction) is a hot topic among construction companies these days, and a short look at Wikipedia will tell you that “(VDC) is the management of integrated multi-disciplinary performance models of design-construction projects, including the product (i.e., facilities), work processes and organization of the design - construction – operation…”. So it has to do with harvesting data from multiple disciplines in a project, consolidating it and managing it in order to capitalize on the data in processes during the project and through handover to operation. It is very closely dependent on BIM (Building Information Modelling).

However the initiatives I’ve seen also concentrates a lot on 5D. That is the consolidation of the design data from multiple disciplines into a virtual 3D representation (BIM), and then adding the dimensions of time and cost. This is done both for estimation purposes and for project execution purposes. This of course makes a lot of sense.

So where does PLM fit into this picture?
PLM is also about consolidation design data from multiple disciplines, connecting that data to business processes and people to those processes. The difference however is that most PLM platforms are created to support multiple projects within the same data base, whereas the VDC tools I’ve seen support project by project, database by database. Just like plant design solutions. This has the drawback that it is very difficult to harvest knowledge or re-use data across projects.
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So do I mean that PLM platforms are better suited for the job than VDC tools of today? Not necessarily. The VDC tools I’ve seen have very strong integrations to the authoring tools that allows them to create a full virtual 3d model. This is partly due to the standardized format for information exchange in that industry, IFC (Industry Foundation Classes), and partly due to very good point integrations. They are also very strong in the domain almost overlapping ERP, the cost and estimation aspects, and they naturally need to integrate towards project planning tools in order to get the time dimension.

Now, that sounds very good, so what’s the problem? Well the problem is that the data management aspect is largely missing. This includes integrated dash board analysis across projects, change management, document management, revision and version control on object structures. The things PLM platforms do well. 

A few years ago I was responsible for the development of a solution on top of a PLM platform for the construction industry, and after a few visits to different BIM centers of excellence I got the impression that the BIM model was important, but one of the headaches for these companies was to keep track of, and control all the other information in a project that also was specifying to the project and to the “data structures” in the BIM model. This included thousands of documents….

So either VDC software companies should implement some of the things that PLM platforms are good at, or PLM software companies must implement some of the things VDC software do very well if they wish to expand their footprint in  the construction industry.

However, there is a third path as well. Maybe a VDC software company could collaborate with a PLM software company to create a killer platform for the construction industry…….

Now wouldn’t that be something?

Some points to ponder
Bjorn Fidjeland

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