Most organisations recognise that digital transformation is an imperative if they are to remain competitive and prosper in the future, however many are struggling to develop practical strategies for digital transformation or to implement them. In particular, the chemical processing industry is lagging behind other industries, particularly with digital transformation of their processing and manufacturing processes. This sector is where Flex process operates and where we have experience with developing digital twins to improve our clients’ operations.
There are as many different definitions of digital twins as there are people involved with them, this is how we apply the concept. If this can help solve your needs, then contact us to see how we can help. In many facilities, even though large amounts of data are available, often historian data, in their OEM control systems, it is usually difficult to utilise this data, and apply it to their plans going forward. The different parties involved in the organisation frequently operate as independent “silos” with minimal data sharing across different manufacturing processes and especially across different sites. Ideally all the data on a site, covering all the different processes, should be aggregated and expanded, to allow process simulation of the complete manufacturing site. When this is done the potential for new insight into operations is obvious. When we do this, we have a Digital Twin.
Flex Process are experts in developing steady state and dynamic models of individual processes and then combining them together in a single model of the whole manufacturing facility. These digital twins can enhance how capital projects are designed, built, and operated, as well as providing great benefits to existing operations allowing them to be safely operated more efficiently and at higher capacity, all the while keeping them within safe operating limits. Building these digital twins is surprisingly affordable, especially when using our stepwise approach. We typically collect data from individual pieces of equipment or individual processes and develop smaller models. This is typically done in response to design, modification or optimisation need; then over time we build up models of the whole process and eventually the whole facility, linking them together and filling in the gaps as required. This approach spreads out the development costs over several years but allows our clients to start seeing the benefits much earlier. Eventually the whole site model allows optimisation of the whole facility, often allowing optimisations and decisions to be made that can save millions of dollars in design operating costs. Digital twins can be applied to both existing operating plants and new projects. Our experience shows that most plants, even new ones can improve their efficiency by 5 or 10%, relatively easily using this technology. Surprisingly, new builds recently delivered by EPCs are especially lucrative for this, since the EPC focus was on getting the plant built on time and on budget and optimising the overall process was never done.
To build the digital twin we collect data about the plant, design and operating data, and equipment data for the plant. This often involves digitally surveying the plant and digitalizing many sources of data, then combining all of this data into steady-state and eventually dynamic models. Besides the obvious benefits in optimising the plant, all this data can easily be used to generate as-build plant information, data sheets, P&IDs and other essential data often critical process safety data that is required to be up to date under the COMAH regulations.
Talk to us to see how we can help with developing a digital twin of your plant and start reaping the benefits soon.
