Yokogawa invests millions to support Saudi growth
Two new companies in the kingdom will spur the company's growth while offering easier access to its services
YOKOGAWA is investing millions of dollars in Saudi Arabia to effectively support the country's booming mega oil, gas and petrochemical projects.
In a strategic move, Yokogawa recently set up two companies in Saudi Arabia: Yokogawa Saudi Arabia Limited and Yokogawa Services Saudi Arabia Limited.
Yokogawa Saudi Arabia is engaged in engineering and manufacturing of process control solutions as well as research and development while Yokogawa Services Saudi Arabia provides after-sales services and training services of Yokogawa systems and products, construction and installation services related to instrumentation and life-cycle maintenance services.
Representing a multi-million-dollar investment, Yokogawa Saudi Arabia opened last December in Khobar. It is located on a 10,000 sq m plot at the Science Park of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran. Future expansion of facilities calls for 18,000 sq m with the built-up area going from 4,000 sq m to 7,000 sq m.
Yokogawa Services Saudi Arabia is a joint venture of Yokogawa and Gas Arabian Services, a long-time partner of Yokogawa in the kingdom. The company, which began operations recently, is located in the Support Industries Area in Jubail with 50 employees and occupies a total area of 5,000 sq m and a built-up area of 2,000 sq m which is to be expanded to 3,000 sq m.
More than 200 professionals will be employed by both companies, allowing Yokogawa to effectively support Saudi Arabia's booming mega oil, gas and petrochemical projects and to contribute to the Kingdom's development.
Yokogawa, which has been in the kingdom for two decades, is spearheading a proactive Saudiisation policy and both contributing to the Saudi economy and providing high-quality local services for the company's largest market in the Middle East.
Policy objectives include the employment and development of Saudi nationals, a technology transfer and procurement of local materials.
Moreover, Yokogawa provides high-quality local services, including on-call services on a 24/7 basis, system engineering, integration, start-up, commissioning, construction work, modernisation of process control systems and customer training.
Akira Ogawa, as president and CEO of Yokogawa Middle East (YME), heads the two companies.
Local presence ... an artist's impression of the Dhahran facility
Yokogawa's existing branch office in Yanbu is set for expansion while its network will be extended to Jeddah and Riyadh.
Despite strong international competition, YME has succeeded in gaining the confidence of its customers thanks to the high reliability of Yokogawa products and the professionalism of its employees.
Yokogawa established its Middle East headquarters at Bahrain in 1990 to facilitate easy access to its growing network of sales, engineering and service facilities throughout the region.
YME has continued to strengthen its service and sales activities to meet increasing demand from the fast-growing markets of the GCC and the wider Middle East. Significantly, YME became one of the regional headquarters and a key worldwide facility for global Yokogawa in early 2006 reflecting the growing importance of the Middle East.
FOUR-FOLD GROWTH
The office in Bahrain
YME is now aligned with its European, American and South East Asian counterparts as a global facility in order to enhance and increase the scale and range of industrial automation (IA) solutions provided on a local basis throughout the Middle East.
Yokogawa's growth in IA business has increased more than four-fold over the last five years in the Middle East.
YME's regional headquarters has a multi-cultural professional workforce specialised in various functions. Currently, it employs over 476 staff in sales, engineering and technical support deployment in strategic locations throughout the region.
Yokogawa has taken advantage of Bahrain's strategic location not only for its ease of access to the region but as a global centre of excellence in the provision of technology and service support. Moreover, Yokogawa is increasing its presence across the region from its Middle East headquarters in Bahrain and operational offices in Saudi Arabia, UAE (Abu Dhabi,and Jebel Ali in Dubai), Oman (Muscat), Qatar (Doha) and Iran (Tehran).
In April 2006, Yokogawa Engineering Middle East started operations in Jebel Ali Free Zone in April last year. From this location Yokogawa is executing seven projects: three in the UAE, and one each in Oman, Egypt, Yemen and Iran.
Yokogawa's workforce comprises engineers specialised in various instrumentation fields. Most projects are locally managed and executed by its staff, including engineering, commissioning, start-up and training.
The activities of YME cover sales and engineering Services embracing project management, supply, site services, training and maintenance of integrated process automation systems, process control instruments and test and measuring instruments.
A major manufacturer and supplier of process control instrumentation and test and measuring instruments, Yokogawa's parent, Yokogawa Electric Corporation, was founded in Japan in 1915. Today, Yokogawa employs more than 19,000 people in a global network of 18 manufacturing facilities, 83 affiliate companies, and over 650 sales and engineering offices in 28 countries.
With more than $3.83 billion in sales, Yokogawa is committed to applying state-of-the-art technology in its three main divisions of industrial automation, test and measurement and information systems, including aviation and industry support. Its commitment to innovation is reflected in its exceptionally high ration of investment in research and development, which enables the sustained development of pioneering new technologies, products and services.
Yokogawa playing key role in the Hawiyah gas project
Top-of-the-line process control systems from Yokogawa Middle East have been installed in a key project that will boost Saudi Aramco's gas prowess
YOKOGAWA Middle East (YME) is partnering with Saudi Aramco to help the oil major achieve unparalleled levels of success in boosting the kingdom's energy stream.
In addition to several other challenging initiatives in the regional energy sector, Yokogawa is playing a pioneering role in Saudi Aramco's Hawiyah Gas Plant expansion. Saudi Aramco is expanding the plant to process more volumes of non-associated gas, and it is also expanding its master gas network.
EXPANSION PROJECT
Saudi Aramco selected YME as the process control systems (PCS) supplier for Hawiyah Gas Plant expansion in April 2006 to work with its lump sum turnkey (LSTK) contractor. This project calls for expanding the plant capacity by adding new process units and facilities.
REPLACEMENT PROJECTS
In addition, YME won two contracts to replace the plant's process control and emergency shutdown systems:
- The first, awarded in April 2006 involved replacing the existing distributed control system (DCS) with the state-of-the-art CENTUM CS3000 DCS; and
- The second, in October 2006, comprised replacing the existing emergency shutdown system (ESD) with the cutting-edge ProSafe-RS ESD system.
 |
| Saudi Aramco ... Yokogawa is a key partner in the oil major's expansion plans |
YME was given a challenging delivery date – the new DCS/ESD systems had to be delivered to the site by August 2007. This was in consideration of the window available for 'cut-over' to new DCS/ESD systems from October 2007 to end of January 2008.
Another pre-requisite was that the cut-over to new DCS/ESD systems had to be coordinated and completed in time for the Hawiyah gas expansion project.
YME's scope of work included site surveys, extracting design data from the plant archives and existing control systems, system design, design reviews, manufacturing, fully integrated testing and delivery to site.
Soon after the project's kick-off meeting, YME engineers made several plant visits and site surveys to get the system design right.
The plant is large, with DCS 12,000 hardwired DCS inputs/outputs and 5,000 hardwired ESD inputs/outputs). A large project team and facility was required to stage and test the entire system configuration in a fully integrated manner at the supplier's location.
YME scaled up its infrastructure to meet the challenge locally, resulting in a satisfied and happy customer. YME's project team comprised 40 people and the testing area allocated for the project was 1,600 sq m.
YME is providing critical systems and services for the expansion of the Hawiyah plant. All the equipment has been shipped to the site and Yokogawa Middle East is currently involved in the installation of the equipment in preparation for the site acceptance test (SAT).
CONSTRUCTION PROJECT
Subsequently, Yokogawa was awarded a procurement and construction contract for carrying out the site work for DCS/ESD replacement projects on a lump sum procurement and build (LSPB) basis. The scope of work included supply of fibre-optic and multi-core cables, various construction materials, control room renovation, installation of new control systems, cutover (cold and hot), demolition of existing hardware, documentation and hand-over.
YME executed these projects from its regional headquarters in Bahrain. This facilitated ease of interaction with all the project stakeholders during the initial critical phase, including Saudi Aramco's project management team, plant engineers, Saudi Aramco's P&CSD and other subsystem suppliers.
YME received good support from Saudi Aramco team members who were keen on enhancing the present plant operation by deploying the latest technology available.
Yokogawa's solution of CS3000 and ProSafe-RS being integrated at the control network level meant significant advantages to the customer.
Yokogawa's involvement will provide key benefits in: control system optimisation, operator's productivity improvement, safety enhancement, performance and reliability enhancement, maintainability enhancement, knowledge transfer, and improvement of plant documentation.
 |
| Key advantage ... factory acceptance testing at Yokogawa's Bahrain office |
As Yokogawa's involvement in the Hawiyah project enters a crucial phase, YME is now ready to handle bigger challenges as part of its continuous growth in the Middle East, a spokesman comments, adding that the Hawiyah project is another example of the trust and confidence placed on YME by a major customer.
Construction work on the Hawiyah plant expansion is ahead of schedule and the project will come on stream in 2008.
YME customers have praised the company for the following reasons: simplified logistics, close co-ordination with end-user engineers, the ability to relocate most of the project's activities to YME's office, and factory acceptance testing of various systems at one location.
Through the successful execution of these contracts at Hawiyah gas plant from its base in Bahrain, Yokogawa Middle East has proven its capability to execute large-scale projects locally in the Middle East, to the fullest satisfaction of its customers, the spokesman adds.