OpreX Profit driven Operation Solution enables integrated Plant Performance Management
“OpreX Profit-driven Operation Solution” is a profit-oriented solution for the process industry. This enables seamless alignment with asset management objectives across the enterprise, from operations to the C suite. The solution is based on a methodology of related performance indicators based on Yokogawa’s extensive expertise.
This helps to optimize the balance between contradictory goals and thus promotes profitability. The solution includes a new performance dashboard and related services specifically developed for the operating level. Also included are programs from KBC Advanced Technologies, a subsidiary of Yokogawa. This company specializes in consulting and simulation for the management of the process industry. “OpreX Profit-driven Operation Solution” has already been optimized for oil refining and petrochemical applications. The aim is to extend this to LNG and basic chemical plants in the near future.
“Process industry executives say that despite significant investments in IT, they have no real visibility into what is happening in their plants and that the goals they communicate are not clearly understood at the operational level,” explains Satoru Kurosu, Executive Vice President “To solve these critical problems, Yokogawa has developed a cross-company methodology of performance metrics that gives them the transparency and direction they need.
Key performance indicators methodology
Key performance indicators methodologyThe integration of Yokogawa’s industrial automation know-how with the expertise of KBC’s experts, who have decades of global analysis and consulting experience with large energy and chemical plants, has enabled the OpreX Profit-driven Operation Solution. Several hundred key figures were defined on this basis and then systematically structured. These “synaptic performance indicators” (SPIs), as Yokogawa calls them, are collected at the plant operation, engineering and top management levels in refinery operations based on knowledge of how they affect plant performance.
Performance dashboard for operation
The solution includes a new performance dashboard and associated services integrated into a control system distributed by CENTUM (DCS / requires CENTUM VP R6 or higher). This enables plant operators to monitor in real time how their operating behavior affects the overriding goals of plant management. As soon as service is carried out in a system, the optimum set point ranges are determined for each SPI. If in this context a certain indicator moves outside the ideal range, a built-in and displayed expert consultation supports even inexperienced operators in quick action. The accumulation of SPIs and operator performance data is automatic. This procedure in turn enables internal and industry-specific benchmarking, as well as an analysis of causes and expert advice for continuous increases in profitability.
“Plant control systems continuously receive a large amount of information from sensors and devices, but the use of this large amount of data, which is collected in real time by the DCS, is mainly limited to plant safety and line control,” explains Masatoshi Nakahara, Executive Vice President of Yokogawa and Head of IA Systems and Service Business Headquarters, who adds: “The combination of the large DCS data and the recorded knowledge of the Yokogawa and KBC experts within the performance dashboard and the services significantly improves transparency, feedback and motivation for the operators and allows them to change their work from event-driven to sustainably profit-oriented.”
A cloud-based program for engineering and top management
The profit-oriented operational solutions portfolio also includes the KBC Co-Pilot program: a package of cloud-based service offerings that displays SPIs at engineering and management level and supports plants with remote expertise and insight. Other KBC consulting services such as operational excellence and profit improvement are available in connection with this program.
The brand OpreX
This profit-oriented business solution is the first solution to carry the OpreX brand. It will unify all Yokogawa products, services and solutions for industrial automation. It is also a flagship solution representing Yokogawa’s Synaptic Business Automation concept.
See for yourself: at the ACHEMA 2018 in Frankfurt from 11 to 15 June. All information about Yokogawa at the world’s leading trade fair for the process industry can be found at www.yokogawa-achema.de
Further information is available at:
https://www.yokogawa.com/solutions/solutions/pdo
https://www.yokogawa.com/oprex/
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