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PLM tales from a true megaproject ch. 5 - Spatial Integration

9/20/2019

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Image courtesy of ESS Spatial Integration Team

In the past chapters I’ve talked an awful lot about structured data and information structures, and yes, in my view this is very important as it is the very essence to obtain effective Plant Lifecycle Management, however in this chapter let’s take breather from the data structures and have a look at how ESS manages the aspect of space management (which is also a structure….. Of course I almost hear you say, but it looks a lot shinier, and by the way, yes it is connected to the tag structure (FBS) and the other information structures).

At ESS there is a team headed by Fabien Rey, responsible for Spatial Integration which includes an all discipline 3D master-model called the EPL (ESS Plant Layout) of the entire facility.
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So, what is this Spatial Integration?
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It is defined as configuration management of the space available. This means that everything that is designed and that will go into the facility and will occupy space, must have received an initial space claim which is then refined throughout the engineering process. This is true for all disciplines from conventional building, machine systems, product engineering, plant & process to electrical.
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Image courtesy of ESS Spatial Integration Team

When examining the EPL from afar, it looks pretty much like what you would expect from any architectural model, but when focusing on the machine aspects in the facility it gets more interesting, however as ESS is a huge facility, so, still not much detail
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Image courtesy of ESS Spatial Integration Team

Let’s zoom in on the tiny little area at the bottom right corner, which is where the proton beam starts its journey towards the target to create spallation of neutrons.
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Image courtesy of ESS Spatial Integration Team

Here we get a taste for the enormous level of detail we are talking about.
The person to the right is to get a feel for the scale. This picture only shows the first few meters of the 650-meter-long accelerator.
The image is from the Virtual Reality room at ESS. The VR room is used for several different purposes, but among them, multi-discipline reviews for everything from design to installation and commissioning activities.
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​Let's look the other way
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Image courtesy of ESS Spatial Integration Team

The next picture is taken, not from the  VR room, but still the same EPL.
This time from a different software with a slightly different purpose. What is unique in my experience is that it is the same model, under configuration control, loaded into different environments for different purposes.
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Image courtesy of Piero Valente, Group Leader Plant & Process at European Spallation Source ERIC
 
So how does ESS control all of this from a process point of view?
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If you look at the picture below, you’ll see the actual engineering process (high level) together with the evolution of a space claim and refinement of design space, or rather the space allocation.
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Image courtesy of ESS Spatial Integration

BUT WAIT!

Why does the process continue from as-designed into as-built and as-scanned??
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Well, I never said that the EPL was purely design space configuration management. ESS has taken it a huge step forward to also incorporate, not only as built models, but rather As-Scanned models as well, which means there is a huge infrastructure in place to secure detailed 3D scans that can be imported into the EPL and put as an “overlay” to the design model like in the picture of the models below.
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Image courtesy of ESS Spatial Integration Team

In such a model, inaccuracies between design model and actually installed becomes painfully apparent. I choose this image because I wanted to commend the extreme accuracy of this piping section, however there are numerous examples where errors have been caught which would have posed problems for other installation disciplines afterwards. Early correction of such mistakes is vital to avoid cascading effects for installation, and therefore scans are performed regularly and compared with the design model.

Below you can see an example of an As-Scanned Colored 3D Point Cloud only…. Remember the pipe from the previous picture….
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Image courtesy of ESS Spatial Integration Team

As we have now visually seen design requirements compared to actually installed, from a spatial integration perspective, I will show the same for tag requirements and installed physical assets in the next chapter. I know I promised this in the last chapter, but I could not resist showing it from a spatial integration perspective first.

It is my hope that this article can serve as inspiration for other companies as well as software vendors. I also want to express my gratitude to the European Spallation Source and to Peter Rådahl, Head of Engineering and Integration department in particular for allowing me to share this with you.
​
Bjorn Fidjeland
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PLM tales from a true megaproject Ch. 4

6/20/2019

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Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

In chapter four we will enter familiar and traditional PLM territory as we will take a closer look at product designs and EBOM’s (Engineering Bill Of Materials). European Spallation Source face the complexities of pure Engineer To Order (ETO) which means that they will only manufacture one of the designed products in the facility, as well as product designs that will be manufactured in series.
It is important to note that some of the products going into the facility was not even invented at the time the decision was made to build the European Spallation Source.

If you would like to read the previous chapters first before we take a deeper dive, you can find them here:
PLM tales from a true megaproject Ch. 1
PLM tales from a true megaproject Ch. 2 – Functional Breakdown Structure
PLM tales from a true megaproject Ch. 3 – Location Breakdown Structure

If you’d like to familiarize yourself more with the concepts of the different structures, please visit:
Plant Information Management - Information Structures

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Figure 1.

As the management of product designs and their data is the home turf of any PLM system (Product Lifecycle Management), this area of the plant PLM platform has been left as much out of the box as possible, but I’ll go through some examples all the same.
The EBOM consists of Parts ordered in a hierarchical structure usually largely defined by mechanical product engineering and their design model. The structure is in itself multidiscipline, meaning that it contains mechanical parts, electrical parts and sometimes parts representing other things like drops of glue, software etc.
Based on an EBOM, one or many products can be manufactured. In other words, it is generic in nature.
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Figure 2. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The image above is from the plant PLM system and shows a simple EBOM which we can see is released. So what does released mean? Well It means that it is ready seen from the product engineering aspect. Such a released product design can be selected to fulfill one or many functional locations (tags) in the overall facility, as we discussed in chapter 1.
A part is specified by a specification, so it has specifying documentation connected in the form of a 3D model, a drawing or a document
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Figure 3. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

In our example in figure 3 there is a 3D model associated, which is specifying the mechanical aspects of the part (note: I have masked owner and released date).
In order to release a part and ultimately an EBOM consisting of parts, a few PLM principles must be observed. Specifying information must always be released prior to the release of the part. So bottom up.
The same is true for the EBOM. Child parts must be released before the parent part can be released. (this is the opposite of the release of the functional structure, but we’ll discuss that in a later chapter)

To govern the release process, a Change Order is used (in PLM also referred to as ECO or Engineering Change Order). In many serial manufacturing companies, it is common to have a process prior to deciding if a change should be implemented. This is because they want to make very sure that they understand all possible impacts a design change might have before they manufacture millions of their products based on the new design.
Such a process, in PLM often referred to as ECR or Engineering Change Request, is omitted at ESS, however the same analysis is performed early on in the change order process.
The release process is one of the areas where ESS have deviated from the out of the box solution in order to streamline as much as possible for their needs.
Let’s have a look at the process with another example. 
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Figure 4. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

Figure 4 shows an EBOM structure used for training at ESS (It is not an ESS design, but merely an example I’ve created in their plant PLM system). Please observe that the EBOM of this plug valve contains a few parts, is three levels deep and is currently in a lifecycle state called In Work (there are more lifecycle states than showed in the images of this article). All Parts and specifications have individual lifecycle states.
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Figure 5. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The image above is seen from the Change Order governing the move of both parts and specifications through their lifecycle states. We can see at the top left of the image that the CO (Change Order) is in “In Work” state. I’ve chosen to let one CO be responsible for the release of the full EBOM and all associated specifications, but I could have split the responsibility across multiple CO’s if I’d wanted to.
In figure 5 we can also see that all parts and their specifications are in state Approved. This means that the responsible engineering discipline feels that they are ready and have done their part of the work
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Figure 6. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The last stretch of the release process is to move all the parts and their specifications from the Approved state to the Released state.
A workflow with electronic signatures is responsible for doing this. The workflow above states that Bjorn Fidjeland… (Yes, me) is responsible for reviewing the entire EBOM and all specifications. In a real live process, the members of a CDR (Critical Design Review) are listed as reviewers, and one or more final approvers assumes responsibility for the release. At ESS the CDR is a multi-discipline review with both internal and external stakeholders.
Normally it is not allowed to have the same person as both reviewer and approver, but since I’ve got admin rights to this environment, and did not want to show the names of ESS reviewers and approvers, the example is as it is.

When the last person in the workflow sequence has approved, all specifications and parts governed by the Change Order are automatically promoted from Approved state to Released state, and the Change Order itself is marked complete. The system itself takes care of the bottom up release rules of the EBOM.
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Figure 7. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

Figure 7 shows the fully released EBOM, including all specifications governed by this one Change Order.

The next chapter will be about how ESS manages information about their physical assets, how physically installed assets are linked to the facility’s tag requirements in the Functional Breakdown Structure, where they are located in the Location Breakdown Structure and from what product design they originate from.

It is my hope that this article can serve as inspiration for other companies as well as software vendors.
I also want to express my gratitude to the European Spallation Source and to Peter Rådahl, Head of Engineering and Integration department in particular for allowing me to share this with you.
​
Bjorn Fidjeland
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PLM tales from a true megaproject Ch. 3

5/23/2019

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Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

In this chapter we are going to take a look at how the location breakdown structure is implemented at the European Spallation Source.
The location structure is a decomposition of physical locations of areas into buildings, levels, rooms, cells and sub-cells. The Location Breakdown Structure contains a consolidated view of all data from a physical location perspective.
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This chapter is built up much the same way as the previous one about the functional breakdown structure, due to their similar look and feel, even though they describe different aspects of the facility. 

If you would like to read previous chapters first before we take a deeper dive, you can find it here:
PLM tales from a true megaproject Ch. 1
PLM tales from a true megaproject Ch. 2 – Functional Breakdown Structure
If you’d like to familiarize yourself more with the concepts of the different structures, please visit:
Plant Information Management - Information Structures


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Figure 1.

When examining the location breakdown structure, you’ll notice that is looks like it also has a form of tag.
​This is entirely correct, the standard used at ESS, EN/ISO 81346, was among other things selected for its ability to name multiple aspects, where the functional aspect is indicated with a equal sign, and the location aspect is indicated with a plus sign. 
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Figure 2. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The image above is from the plant PLM system and shows a small part of the location breakdown structure at ESS.
Let’s go through what we see in the image, and use the TS2 Area (Test Stand 2) row 15 – +ESS.G02.100.1001.102 as an example.
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Figure 3. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The first column shows the location name of the individual location object.
The second column with the little green icon gives you the option to zoom in on the location if further details are needed, for instance attribute values of the location such as owner of the location, status, specifications, reference documents, history etc.

The third column shows a paperclip if there are specifying documentation associated with the location. In figure 4 we can see that the Tunnel has 308 documents associated whereas 271 of them are considered specifying documentation to the location and 7 are requirement specifications (the green check mark means that it has the lifecycle state released). We can also see that 37 documents are regarded as reference documents. This means that they are describing the location, but are not regarded as specifying to the location.
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Figure 4. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The Tag column shows the full location tag , and the description column indicates a description of the location.
The type column indicates the type of area. At ESS this can be area, building, level (where 100 is floor level), room, cell and sub cells.
The FBS (Functional Breakdown Structure) column in figure 3 allows you to see at what functional locations, so Tags, the physical location actually contains. The functional locations are displayed in the split view as shown in figure 5.
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Figure 5. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

We can clearly see that the TS2 Area currently contains 258 functional tags (master tags), and all information regarding each functional tag is directly available in this view.

The IS column in figure 3 refers to the actually installed assets in the plant that is used to implement the functional object requirements that are located in the physical location of TS2 Area (an asset is a physical thing that typically has a serial number). See figure 6.
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Figure 6. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The released part column in figure 3 gives an overview of what released product designs (Engineering Bill Of Materials) or standard parts that can fulfill the functional object requirements physically located in the TS2 Area (there might be several options prior to procurement, however the installed asset will only have an association to one part as it was manufactured based on that particular product design).

The last column in figure 3, called Change Order displays a link to the Change Order responsible for releasing the physical location together with all specifying documentation.

So, from one view in the plant PLM system, the European Spallation Source is able to access all related data to all physical locations in their location breakdown structure from engineering and design through installation, commissioning, operations, maintenance and ultimately decommissioning.

The next chapter will be about how ESS manages product design (Engineering Bill Of Materials), both from an Engineer To Order perspective and a serial manufacturing perspective.

It is my hope that this article can serve as inspiration for other companies as well as software vendors. I also want to express my gratitude to the European Spallation Source and to Peter Rådahl, Head of Engineering and Integration department in particular for allowing me to share this with you.

Bjorn Fidjeland
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PLM tales from a true megaproject Ch. 2

4/12/2019

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Image courtesy of Fabien Rey, Group Leader Machine Engineering Service Group at European Spallation Source ERIC

In this chapter we are going to take a look at how the functional breakdown structure is implemented at the European Spallation Source. The functional structure is a functional decomposition of systems and subsystems all the way down to individual functions, or as ESS calls them, components. The Functional Breakdown Structure contains a consolidated view of data from all plant engineering disciplines including electrical, plant & process and mechanical.
If you would like to read chapter one first before we take a deeper dive, you can find it here:
PLM tales from a true megaproject Ch. 1

If you’d like to familiarize yourself more with the concepts of the different structures, please visit:
Plant Information Management - Information Structures and
Plant Engineering meets Product Engineering in capital projects

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Figure 1.

The first thing you’ll notice is the tagging. It was decided to use the standard EN/ISO 81346 as a common master tag at the European Spallation Source. The equal sign means that it is the functional aspect, however anybody familiar with the standard will notice something a bit odd. The first 2 levels are not quite according to standard. It was decided that the first level was to be ESS, and the second levels ACC (Accelerator), TS (Target Station), NSS (Neutron Scattering Systems) and INFR (Infrastructure). Anything below the first and second level is according to the guidelines of the standard.

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Figure 2. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The image above is from the plant PLM system and shows the functional breakdown structure of the Test Stand 2 piping system as an example. At the time of writing, the functional breakdown structure contains about 50.000 tags, but is expected to grow to well over 1 million tags.
Let’s go through what we see in the image, and use the first row – W02 (the Test Stand 2 piping system) as an example in the beginning.
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Figure 3. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The first column shows the tag name of the individual functional object (W02). The second column with the little green icon gives you the option to zoom in on the object if further details are needed, for instance all the attribute values of the object coming from object type or class (European Spallation Source uses ISO 15926-4 as a basis for their master reference data).
The third column shows a paperclip if there are specifying documentation associated with the tag. In figure 4 we can see that the Test Stand 2 piping system has one released P&ID (the green check mark means that it has the lifecycle state released), and that there are 15 other reference documents associated.
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Figure 4. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The Tag column shows the full functional master tag, and the description column indicates a description of the functional object.
The classification column shows what kind of functional object it is. This refers to the master reference data class that is used to describe the properties or attributes this specific tag has got. In order to explain better we need to take a step back.
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I mentioned that the European Spallation Source opted to use ISO 15926-4 as a basis for their master reference data. This means that there is a vast library of classes that defines what attributes, let’s say a Temperature Sensor should have, and also what letter codes (defined based on EN 81346) it should have. So, when a functional object is first created, it only has basic attributes that are shared across all functional objects, however when the system is told that it is a Temperature Sensor, it gets all the attributes defined for the class Temperature Sensor in addition to it’s tag which is computed by the parent object’s tag, the letter code and the number of other Temperature Sensors at this level in the functional breakdown structure plus one.
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Figure 5. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The image above shows some of the attributes for the selected Temperature Sensor tag, but without operational data.
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The LBS (Location Breakdown Structure) column in figure 3 allows you to see at what physical location the functional object is located.
If the functional object is a pipe or cable that spans multiple locations, then several physical locations are displayed in the split view as shown in figure 6.
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Figure 6. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

The IS column in figure 3 refers to the actually installed asset in the plant that implements the functional object requirements (physical item with serial number). See figure 7.
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Figure 7. Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC
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The released part column in figure 2 gives an overview of what released product designs (Engineering Bill Of Materials) or standard parts that can fulfill the functional object requirements (there might be several options prior to procurement, however the installed asset will only have an association to one part as it was manufactured based on that particular product design).
 
So from one view in the plant PLM system, the European Spallation Source is able to access all related data to all functional objects in their functional breakdown structure from design and engineering through installation, commissioning, operations, maintenance and ultimately decommissioning.
The next chapter will be about the Location Breakdown Structure.

It is my hope that this article can serve as inspiration for other companies as well as software vendors. I also want to express my gratitude to the European Spallation Source and to Peter Rådahl, Head of Engineering and Integration department in particular for allowing me to share this with you.

Bjorn Fidjeland
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PLM tales from a true mega-project Ch. 1

3/27/2019

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Image courtesy of European Spallation Source ERIC

I’ve been asked on several occasions if I can share some more details from any of the projects I’ve been involved with. Especially the ones addressing plant lifecycle management and the use of structured data.
Naturally, most commercial companies who face fierce competition every day are reluctant to do so, as it is deemed highly important for their competitiveness. Or as one client put it “This is truly our backbone, while our master-data is our lifeblood”
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However, there is one very special company I’ve been fortunate to be involved with for several years now who has agreed to share some of their details.
​It is the European Spallation Source ERIC or ESS for short. An organization tasked with executing a true mega-project, to design, build and operate the world’s brightest neutron source for scientific use.

So what is the European Spallation Source?
In short it is a 750 meters long and 250 meters wide facility that houses a huge linear proton accelerator or LINAC. The accelerator is responsible for accelerating protons produced by an Ion Source up to 96% of the speed of light. The protons are then collided into the target which is a 2.6 m-diameter stainless steel disk containing bricks of a neutron-rich heavy metal called Tungsten. This is where Spallation occurs, where neutrons are flung out from the target wheel. These neutrons are the main product of the European Spallation Source, and they are guided through neutron guides to the instruments that allow researchers to do their research. It is anticipated that 22 instruments will be installed in total.
For more information, check out europeanspallationsource.se
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Image courtesy of Fabien Rey, Group Leader Machine Engineering Service Group at European Spallation Source ERIC
 
What kind of research will be conducted?
Some examples are: chemistry of materials, magnetic & electronic phenomena, life science & soft condensed matter, engineering materials, geosciences, archeology & heritage conservation, fast neutron applications and particle physics

Well, back to the real question at hand. What have they done with respect to plant lifecycle management and technical information management?
If you want to freshen up on my views with respect to needed information structures, you may do so here:
Plant Information Management - Information Structures
Archive of articles

What ESS has put in place is truly remarkable. By extending a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system to also manage:
  • Functional Breakdown Structure (Tags)
  • Location Breakdown Structure (Physical Locations)
  • Engineering Bill of Material (EBOM for product designs, traditionally the home turf of a PLM system)
  • Management of all installed assets or physically installed items (the front end for asset management and warehouse management is an Enterprise Asset Management system, whereas assets installed in the facility are also created and consolidated in the PLM system together with relationships to their corresponding Tag, Location, Part and their common reference data class with attributes)
Reference data: A class library of common reference data used across Functional Breakdown Structure, Engineering Bill of Material and Assets. Each class has attributes defined deemed important to ESS.

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In addition to the actual data structures, each object in any structure is governed by revision control and change management, not only of the objects themselves but also their associated specifications in the form of 3D design models, drawings, certificates and reports etc.

Why has the European Spallation Source done this when they are only building one such facility?
The main reason is to support the European Spallation Source evolution from project to a sustainable facility enabling world-leading science for ≥40 years, and to establish the foundation needed for future cost-efficient operation and maintenance.
 
A second reason is the fact that the facility in some areas is producing radiation in the form of radioactivity. This means that parts of the facility fall under the regulatory requirements of the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority which in turn means rigorous control of all technical information as well as configuration management of such information.
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In the coming articles I will address each information structure, as well as the topics of digital twin, master reference data, change management and revision control with live examples from the European Spallation Source.

In this regard I would like to offer a special thanks to Peter Rådahl, Head of Engineering and Integration department at the European Spallation Source whom I’ve had the privilege to serve as an advisor for several years now. Peter Raadahl had a clear vision from the start on how to best serve the European Spallation Source with respect to managing technical information, formed a strategy for how to get there and stuck to the strategy through many an obstacle.
 
Bjorn Fidjeland
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PLM Benchmark 3 – EPC 2  What did they do and why?

8/2/2018

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This is an article in the series regarding PLM benchmarking among operators, EPC’s and product companies.
The articles cover the motivation for doing as they did, and where their main focus was put in order to achieve their goals.

I will continue to use my information structure map, or the “circle of life” as a client jokingly called it, to explain where the different companies put their focus in terms of information management and why.
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​EPC 2 had a slightly different focus from the EPC in my previous article as they were in an industry where there is a less clear split between Engineering Procurement and Construction companies and Product companies in the capital project value chain.
This company had the challenges of both EPC’s and product companies in ETO (Engineer To Order) projects as they owned several product companies, and naturally used a lot of their products in their EPC projects.
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Figure 2 shows the different data structures that EPC 2 focused on

Their first objective was to respond to fearsome competition from other parts of the world who suddenly emerged on the global scene. In order to do so it was considered crucial to limit the amount of engineering hours used to gain projects. To achieve this, they decided to build a catalog of re-usable data structures with different perspectives (plant, product, execution) in order to promote a controlled re-use of both plant and product engineering data. Similarly, as for EPC 1 they recognized that standardization across disciplines would be necessary to make it all work. The reference/master data put in place for all disciplines to share was a proprietary company standard.

Secondly, they needed to replace a homegrown engineering data hub. This homegrown solution was very impressive indeed and contained a lot of functionality that commercial systems lack even today, however its architecture was built around processes that did no longer work as EPC 2 entered new markets.

Thirdly they wanted to connect their plant engineering disciplines with the various product engineering disciplines throughout their own product companies worldwide. Naturally this meant run-time sharing and consolidation of data on a large scale. The emergence of the catalog with different aspects meant that plant engineering could pick systems and products from the catalog and have auto generated project specific tag information in the functional structure of their projects. It also meant that product engineering would be able to either generate a unique Engineer To Order bill of material if needed, or if plant engineering had not done any major modifications, link it to an already existing Engineering Bill of Material for the full product definition. 
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Their fourth objective was to obtain full traceability of changes across both plant and product engineering disciplines from FEED (Front End Engineering & Design) to delivered project. The reason for this objective was twofold. One part was to be able to prove to clients (operators) where changes originated from (largely from the client itself), and secondly to be able to measure what changes originated from their own engineering disciplines without project planning and execution knowing about it….. Does it sound familiar?
In order to achieve this, engineering data change management was enforced on both FEED functional design structures (yes, there could be several different design options for a project) and the functional structure in the actually executed EPC project. The agreed FEED functional structure was even locked and copied to serve as the starting point for the EPC project. At this point all data in the functional structure was released, subjected to full change management (meaning traceable Change Orders would be needed to change it) and made available to project planning and execution via integration.
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Figure 3 shows the sequence of data structures that was focused on in the implementation project.

Since product design and delivery was a large portion of their projects, the Engineering Bill of Material (EBOM) and variant management (the catalog structures) got a lot more focus compared with EPC 1 in my previous article. This was natural because, as mentioned, EPC 2 owned product companies and wanted to make a shift from Engineer To Order (ETO) towards more Configure To Order (CTO).
It was however decided to defer the catalog structures towards the end because they wanted to gain experience across the other aspects as well before starting to create the catalog itself.

The Functional Structure with the consolidated plant design, project specific data and associated documentation was out next together with the establishment of structures for project execution (WBS), estimation and control (Sales structure), and logistics (Supply structure).

Once the various data structures were in place, the focus was turned to “gluing it all together” with the re-usable catalog structures and the reference data which enabled interoperability across disciplines.

A more comprehensive overview explaining the different structures can be found in the article:
Plant Information Management - Information Structures, and further details regarding each information structure are discussed in:
Plant Engineering meets Product Engineering in capital projects
Handover to logistics and supply chain in capital projects
Plant Information Management - Installation and Commissioning
Plant Information Management – Operations and Maintenance

​Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by 8vfand and purchased at dreamstime.com
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PLM Benchmark 2 – EPC 1 What did they do and why?

4/27/2018

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This is the second article in the series regarding PLM benchmarking among operators, EPC’s and product companies where I share some experiences with you originating from different companies.
The articles cover the motivation for doing as they did, and where their main focus was put in order to achieve their goals.
In this series I use my information structure map, or the “circle of life” as a client jokingly called it, to explain where the different companies put their focus in terms of information management and why. 
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​EPC 1’s first objective was to replace an in-house built engineering data hub. The reason for this was that over the years, needs and requirements had changed both from customers (operators) as the EPC went global, and internally within the organization. This situation lead to more and more customizations of the engineering data hub resulting in sky rocketing cost of ownership, and ironically, less and less flexibility.

This is by no means a unique situation as many EPC’s were forced to build such hubs in the late nineties for consolidation and control of multidiscipline plant information since no software vendor at the time could support their needs.

Secondly it was considered crucial to enable standardization and re-use of previously delivered designs and engineering data.
A huge effort was put on building reference data for sharing and alignment across plant engineering disciplines, procurement and ultimately client handover of Documentation For Installation & Operations (DFI/DFO). An ISO 15926 ontology was put in place for this purpose.
The main reason for enabling standardization and re-use of engineering data however, was to reduce the gigantic number of engineering hours that were spent in the early phases of each project delivery. Especially during the FEED phase (Front End Engineering and Design). Another important reason was to connect engineering with procurement and the wider supply chain more seamlessly.
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​Figure 2. shows what information structures EPC 1 put most emphasis on. Quite naturally the Functional Location structure (tag structure, multi discipline plant design requirements) received a lot of focus. To enable re-use and efficient transfer of data, both the reference data and a library of re-usable design structures using the reference data was built.

Extensive analysis of previously executed projects revealed that even if the EPC had a lot of engineering concepts and data that could be re-used across projects, they more often than not created everything from scratch in the next project. In order to capitalize on and manage the collective know-how of the organization, the re-usable design structures received a lot of focus.

EPC 1 also faced different requirements from operators with respect to use of tagging standards depending on what parts of the world they delivered projects to, so as a consequence, multiple tagging standards needed to be supported. It was decided that no matter what format the operator wanted to receive, all tags in all projects would be governed by an internal “master-tag” in the EPC’s own system while communicated to the customer in their specified format.

The third focus area was an extensive part (or article) library with internal part numbers and characteristics showing what kind of products could fulfill the tag requirements in the functional structure. Each part was then linked via a relationship to objects representing preferred suppliers of that product in different regions of the world. This concept greatly aided engineering procurement when performing Material Take-Off (MTO) since each tag would be linked to a part where preferred supplier could be selected. 
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​EPC 1 chose to focus on the reference data first in order to get a common agreement regarding needed data across their disciplines during the EPC project lifecycle. Next in line was the catalog of re-usable engineering structures. These structures could be used and selected as a starting point in any EPC project.
The third delivery in the project centered around delivering the capabilities to create and use the different plant engineering structures (functional structure, tags, with connected parts where both entities used the same reference data )
 
An overview explaining the different structures can be found in the article:
Plant Information Management - Information Structures, and further details regarding each information structure are discussed in:
Plant Engineering meets Product Engineering in capital projects
Handover to logistics and supply chain in capital projects
Plant Information Management - Installation and Commissioning
Plant Information Management – Operations and Maintenance

Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by Viacheslav Iacobchuk and purchased at dreamstime.com
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PLM Benchmark – Operator 1 What did they do and why?

3/9/2018

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This as a first in a series of articles where I share some experiences with you from different product companies, EPC’s and operators.
The articles will cover the motivation for doing as they did, and where their main focus was put in order to achieve their goals.

There is a span in the different experiences of almost 20 years… I would like you to reflect a bit on that and keep in mind some of the buzzwords of today. Especially digital twin, IOT and Big Data analytics.
In this series I will use my information structure map, or the “circle of life” as a client jokingly called it, to explain where the different companies put their focus in terms of information management strategy and why.

An overview explaining the different structures can be found in the article:
Plant Information Management - Information Structures, and further details regarding each information structure are discussed in:
Plant Engineering meets Product Engineering in capital projects
Handover to logistics and supply chain in capital projects
Plant Information Management - Installation and Commissioning
Plant Information Management – Operations and Maintenance
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Operator 1’s first objectives was to shorten the project execution time from design through installation and commissioning by letting the projects information model be gradually built up through all project phases and by all stakeholders in one common platform.
By doing it this way there would be no handover of documentation but rather a handover of access and responsibility of data. A large focus was put on standardizing information exchange between both stakeholders in the capital projects and between computer systems. The entry point to all information was a 3D representation of the data structures!

Makes you think of digital twin……. However this initiative was before anybody had heard of it...The 3D representation was NOT a design model, but rather a three-dimensional representation of the asset linked to all the information structures creating different dimensions or information layers if you will.

So it had to be quite small assets this operator was dealing with you might think?

Actually no, one of the assets managed was about a million tags. Concepts from the gaming industry like Level Of Detail and back-face culling were used to achieve the level of performance needed from the 3D side.
So why this enormous effort by an operator to streamline just the initial stages of an assets lifecycle?
I mean the operators real benefit comes from operating the asset in order to produce whatever it needs to produce, right?
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Because it was seen as a prerequisite to capitalize on plant information in training, simulation, operations, maintenance and decommissioning. Two words summarizes the motivation: Maximum up-time. How to achieve it: operational run-time data from sensors linked and compared with accurate and parametric as-designed, as-built and as-maintained data.
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​Figure 2. shows what information structures the operator put most emphasis on. Quite naturally the Functional structure (tag structure and design requirements), and corresponding physically installed asset information was highly important, and this is what they started with (see figure 3). Reference Data to be able to compare and consolidate data from the different structures was next in line together with an extensive parts (article) catalog of what could be supplied by whom in different regions of the world.
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There was an understanding that a highly document-oriented industry could not shift completely to structured data and information structures overnight for everything, so document management was also included as what was regarded as an intermediate step. The last type of structure they focused on was project execution structures (Work Breakdown Structures). This was not because it was regarded as less important, actually it was regarded as highly important since it introduced the time dimension with traceability and control of who should do what, or did what when. The reasoning behind it was that since work breakdown structures tied into absolutely everything, they wanted to test and roll out the “base model” of data structures in the three-dimensional world (the 3D database) before introducing the fourth dimension.

​Bjorn Fidjeland
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The header image used in this post is by Jacek Jędrzejowski and purchased at dreamstime.com
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Digital Twin - What needs to be under the hood?

10/22/2017

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In the article Plant Information Management – Information Structures, and the following posts regarding Plant Information Management (see Archive) I explained in more detail the various information structures, the importance of structuring the data as object structures with interconnecting relationships to create context between the different information sources. 

​What does all of this have to do with the digital twin? - Let's have a look.

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​Information structures and their interconnecting relationships can be described by one of the major fashion word these days, the digital thread or digital twin.
The term and concept of a digital twin was first coined by Michael Grieves at the University of Michigan in 2002, but has since taken on a life of its own in different companies.
 
Below is an example of what information can be accessed from a digital twin or rather what the digital twin can serve as an entry point for:
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​If your data is structured in such a way with connected objects, attributes and properties, an associated three-dimensional representation of the physically delivered instance is a tremendously valuable asset as a carrier of information. It is however, not a pre- requisite that it is a 3D model, a simple dashboard giving access to the individual physical items might be enough. The 3D stuff is always promoted in the glossy sales representations by various companies, but it’s not needed for every possible use case. In a plant or aircraft, it makes a lot of sense, since the volume of information and number of possible entry points to the full data set is staggering, but it might not be necessary to have individual three-dimensional representations for all mobile phones ever sold. It might suffice to have each data set associated with each serial number.
 
On the other hand, if you have a 3D representation, it can become a front end used by end users for finding, searching and analyzing all connected information from the data structures described in my previous blog posts. Such insights takes us to a whole new level of understanding of each delivered products life, their challenges and opportunities in different environments and the way they are actually being used by end customers.
 
Let’s say that we via the digital twin in the figure above select a pump. The tag of that pump uniquely identifies the functional location in the facility. An end user can pull information from the system the pump belongs to in the form of a parametric Piping & Instrumentation Diagram (P&ID), the functional specification for the pump in the designed system, information about the actually installed pump with serial number, manufacturing information, supplier, certificates, performed installation & commissioning procedures and actual operational data of the pump itself.
 
The real power in the operational phase becomes evident when operational data is associated with each delivered pump. In such a case the operational data can be compared with environmental conditions the physical equipment operates in. Let’s say that the fluid being pumped contains more and more sediments, and our historical records of similar conditions tells us that the pump will likely fail during the next ten days due to wear and tear of critical components. However, it is also indicated that if we reduce the power by 5 percent we will be able to operate the full system until the next scheduled maintenance window in 15 days. Information like that gives real business value in terms of increased uptime.
 
Let’s look at some other possibilities.
If we now consider a full facility with a three-dimensional representation:
During the EPC phase it is possible to associate the 3D model with a fourth dimension, time, turning it into a 4D model. By doing so, the model can be used to analyze and validate different installation execution plans, or monitor the actual ongoing installation of the Facility. We can actually see the individual parts of the model appearing as time progresses.
 
A fifth dimension can also be added, namely cost. Here the cost development over time according to one or several proposed installation execution plans or the actual installation itself can be analyzed or monitored.
This is already being done by some early movers in the construction industry where it is referred to as 5D or Virtual Design & Construction.
 
The model can also serve as an important asset when planning and coordinating space claims made by different disciplines during the design as well as during the actual installation. It can easily give visual feedback if there is a conflict between space claims made by electrical engineering and mechanical engineering, or if there is a conflict in the installation execution plan in terms of planned access by different working crews.
More and more companies are also making use of laser scanning in order to get an accurate 3D model of what has been actually installed so far. This model can easily be compared with the design model to see if there are any deviations. If deviations are found, they can be acted upon by analyzing how it will impact the overall system if it is left as it is, or will it require re-design? Does the decision to leave it as it is change the performance of the overall system? Are we still able to perform the rest of the installation, due to less available space?
Answers to these questions might entail that we will have to dismantle the parts of the system that has deviations. It is however a lot better and cost effective to identify such problems as early as possible.
 
This is just great, right? Such insights as mentioned would have huge impacts on how EPC’s manage their projects, operators run their plants and how product vendors can operate or service their equipment in the field, as well as feeding information back to engineering to make better products.
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​New business models can be created in the likes of: “We sell power by the hour, dear customer, you don’t even have to buy the asset itself”!
(Power-by-the-Hour is a trademark of Rolls-Royce, although the concept itself is 50 years old you can read about a more recent development here)
 
So why haven’t more companies already done it?
 
Because in order to get there, the underlying data must be connected, and in the form of… yes data as in objects, attributes and relationships. It requires a massive shift from document orientation to connected data orientation to be at its most effective.
 
On the bright side, several companies in very diverse industries have started this journey, and some are already starting to harvest the fruits of their adventure.
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My advice to any company thinking about doing the same would be along the lines of:
When eating this particular elephant, do it one bite at the time, remember to swallow and let your organization digest between each bite.

Bjorn Fidjeland

The header image used in this post is by Elnur 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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