Industrial Automation Magazine India

ET, through digital engineering models, helps bring together IT and OT

Published on : Tuesday 30-11--0001

Last October Bentley and Siemens launched the PlantSight digital cloud services. How has the industry responded to it?

Interest in PlantSight is extremely high both from operators of process plants and EPCs. In October 2018 we announced the solution name and invited users into an early-adopter program. The early adopters have provided some great feedback in regard to its functionality and usability, and we’re looking forward to the commercial release in the next few months.

Process industries in general, oil & gas in particular, are leading in technology adoption. What is their response to PlantSight?

PlantSight is targeted at the process industries including oil and gas companies. Early adopters are still testing the solution. We have asked some of these users to speak at the upcoming Year in Infrastructure Conference in Singapore in October (https://yii.bentley.com/). PlantSight gives a complete overview of the entire plant and helps operation managers to make informed decisions faster. An operation manager needs to track and compare all plants worldwide to spot possibilities for improvement – anytime, anywhere. They can “future-proof” their business in the long run. An engineer needs to see all the data in a single environment – without having to waste time sorting out data and information. With PlantSight, engineers can understand what decisions were made in the past – and why. With this accessibility, PlantSight helps to improve engineering and operations and deliver the data at a lower cost. 

  

While the industry is still coming to grips with the IT/OT divide, Bentley has added ET to the equation. Does it help bridge the divide more effectively?

Engineering Technology or ET, through digital engineering models, does indeed help bring together IT and OT. Having a strong asset lifecycle information management (ALIM) base, created using engineering applications and advanced visualisation tools like 3D, augmented reality, and virtual reality, significantly enhances the data about the plant and creates the plant’s digital DNA. Knowing the true current status of the plant through reality modelling and continuous surveying helps planning, inspections, and maintenance. Knowing what your plant is capable of and tracking performance across any number of parameters, provides more information for decision making and improved asset performance.

Bentley talks about digital advancement rather than transformation. Is this a better approach for brownfield projects?

Digital advancements in technology are continuously developing and will always drive new digital work processes. Transformation implies a one-time change. Digital technology, through digital context, workflows and components, will continuously deliver advancements. 

Artificial Intelligence has still not made a significant dent in manufacturing industries. Is this about to change now with performance digital twins?

Over the past few years, companies have made significant investments in sensors and other technologies to capture the necessary data required for AI. Performance digital twins are more than modelling the plant and continuously surveying it. Performance digital twins also encompass the use of AI and machine learning to automatically identify plant assets, identify optimal performance and possible issues, and predict future performance. Leveraging AI within digital twins with Bentley’s iTwin^® Services will enhance performance.

Data is the new gold, or as a Bentley executive put it recently, it is the new infrastructure. Will a connected data environment help reduce operations cost in the plant lifecycle?

Bentley’s connected data environment (CDE) brings data together to improve collaboration among stakeholders and improve decision making. Our CDE is cost-effective and leverages an open platform that federates data and makes the most use of existing investments in systems and information. Our CDE is also scalable and does not require wholesale change. Here are a few of the many examples of excellent RoI provided by the CDE on projects and in operations.

• In China, CEC used Bentley’s open, CDE based on ProjectWise^® to enable the Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed railway design team to access and share information across multiple disciplines to streamline workflows and reduce rework, saving CNY 3 million on the project.
• In India, Maha Metro deployed a digital project management system, developed through the CDE, for the Nagpur Metro project. This included the combined capabilities of ProjectWise and AssetWise and covers planning to performance stages of the asset lifecycle. Maha Metro expects to save USD 400,000 by avoiding data loss alone, and an estimated USD 222 million over 25 years of operations.
• In Russia, Volgogradnefteproekt delivered an as-built 3D information model, unifying project data in a CDE with AssetWise for Lukoil’s Filanovsky field in the Caspian Sea. The ongoing use of AssetWise ALIM as the data source will deliver a 30 per cent reduction in information search time, a 70 per cent reduction in data exchange time, and a 25 per cent increase in document coordination efficiency. Using the 3D digital model from design through construction and commissioning to operations and maintenance is expected to reduce construction and annual operations costs for the field by 30 per cent.

Anne-Marie Walters, a chartered chemical engineer, represents Bentley on the board of the Construction Industry Institute and is also heavily engaged in the activities of FIATECH. She is a founding member of the Process Industries STEP Consortium (PISTEP) committee and has served on the boards of CIMsteel and the United Kingdom’s chapter of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI).