听到需要分解企业中存在的孤岛的需求并不少见，但是找到能够成功实现这一目标的公司的普遍性要少得多。南方公司is usingaveva’s suite of design, simulation and engineering tools to do just that—bridge the divide separating the engineering and design side of the business from the operations and maintenance side. With this toolset, the energy utility has been able to significantly reduce the time it takes to access asset information and leverage it in a virtual plant environment to support activities related to both operations and maintenance as well.
南部公司拥有北美最大的燃煤电厂。When the innovation manager at Plant Scherer in Juliette, Ga., got a look at the design, simulation and engineering suite that Southern’s Engineering and Construction Services (E&CS) department had been working with, she wanted to know where the applications were for operations and maintenance. It wasn’t long before the project’s resources got diverted to figuring out its use on a hydrogen purge for Plant Scherer.
Hydrogen purge is a very controversial topic for Southern, according to Tedd Weitzman, project manager for E&CS’s Performance Improvement Team. “It’s a pretty lengthy, complicated process,” he noted. “They don’t do it too frequently. But when they do, they have to follow the procedures by the letter or else things will go squirrelly.”
这是集成设计套件有可能发光的区域。Weitzman向与会者展示了完整的对象模型avevaWorld Conference North America本周在达拉斯，表明他可以轻松地放大整个工厂的数字代表，浏览高度详细的资产或单击特定的设备以拔出与之相关的一系列信息。他说：“找到工作所需的信息需要三分钟或更短的时间。”
甲型肝炎病毒ing a fully navigable model doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to find the information you need. But Weitzman also showed the ability to group assets any way you want. “You still see the context of the facility, but it’s all grayed out. When you select a query, it highlights everything that’s part of that query,” he demonstrated, showing various parts of an asset pop up in a purple color. “It very easily lets me visualize just the boiler feed part of plant.”
Weitzman’s team used those capabilities to create a proof of concept for the hydrogen purge. “We went out and scanned a small footprint of the facility. It was just a limited number of scans—just a day’s worth—and we did a little bit of modeling,” Weitzman said, explaining that the idea was just to show what could be done with the scans.
He then scrolled quickly through a typical hydrogen purge manual to show the massive number of instructions involved—things like making sure valve G-131 is open, then close G-132 and do this, then close G-131, etc. Somebody new to the procedure might be able to guess that G-132 is next to G-131, but do they really want to guess about that for a hydrogen purge? Instead, they can click on the G-132 label in the model and be shown exactly where the valve is. “Does anybody not see the value in that type of functionality?” Weitzman challenged.
The team took just one page from the procedures and automated it to show the capabilities. “We were able to do this in a very short period of time, at a very low cost,” Weitzman said. “That is key with all of this—very low cost.”
Southern completed a second proof of concept on a boiler feed pump turbine in just two weeks, modeling the skid to show the ability to link information from other systems directly into the environment and view inventory on the fly.
“We see the vision, we see the value in the tools,” Weitzman said. “What they’re doing now is digitally enabling all four units of Plant Scherer. There will be somewhere around 1,800 assets that will be modeled.”
Plant Scherer’s innovation manager, Stacy Egnor, who was sitting in the audience, commented on the usefulness of the tools and where she would like to see it go for maintenance capabilities. “I want something to tell me that I have six or eight months of life left on this widget,” she said. “I don’t want a call in the middle of the night saying that the boiler is about to blow.
Egnor说，现成的数字访问资产也将是未来的重要一步。“过去，您给我们留下了图纸。向前迈进，您会留下我们的扫描，”她说。
Weitzman指出，除了技术本身之外，变更管理也很重要。他强调了能够接受一些失败的重要性。“据我所知，我们是第一个与AVEVA Design Suite一起全面插入的人。我们做了一切，我们立刻做了所有事情。这非常成功，”他说。但是他还强调：“您可以针对不良过程部署一项非常出色的技术，并更快地搞砸。我们尽量不这样做。”
