Yokogawa Electric Corp. released July 7 its OpreX Profit-driven Operation for the process industries that drives seamless alignment with plant management objectives across organizations. The solution is based on interrelated performance indicators distilled from Yokogawa's domain knowledge and promotes profitability by balancing conflicting objectives. It incorporates a new performance dashboard and services designed for operations, as well as programs provided by KBC Advanced Technologies, a Yokogawa subsidiary specializing in consulting and simulation for process management. The solution has already been optimized for oil refining and petrochemicals, and Yokogawa intends to expand its application to LNG and basic chemical plants in the near future.
"Process industry executives say, despite considerable investment in IT, they don't have true visibility into what's happening across their plants, and that objectives they communicate aren't clearly understood by operations," says Satoru Kurosu, executive VP and head of Yokogawa's Premium Solutions and Service division. "To help solve these critical issues, Yokogawa has constructed a cross-organizational performance metrics method to provide the visibility and alignment they need."
Profit-driven Operation is the first solution to bear the OpreX brand, under which all of Yokogawa's industrial automation products, services and solutions will be unified moving forward. It's also a flagship solution representing Yokogawa's Synaptic Business Automation concept that underlies a process of co-innovation with customers to create sustainable value by connecting everything in their organization.
As part of the solution launch, Yokogawa is releasing a new performance dashboard and related services that are integrated into a Centum VP R6 or higher DCS to enable plant operators to monitor in real time how their operation patterns impact high-level plant management objectives. When the service is implemented at a plant, optimal setpoint ranges are determined for each SPI, and then if a certain indicator moves outside the ideal range, built-in expert advice is displayed to support prompt action by even inexperienced operators. The SPIs and operator performance data are automatically accumulated to enable internal and industry benchmarking, root cause analysis, and expert consulting for continuous profitability gains.
"Plant control systems continuously receive a vast amount of information from sensors and devices, but the utilization of this big data collected in real time by the DCS has mainly been limited to front-line plant safety and line control," adds Masatoshi Nakahara, Yokogawa executive VP and head of the IA Systems and Service division. "Bringing together the DCS big data and the captured knowledge of Yokogawa and KBC experts within the performance dashboard and services dramatically improves transparency, feedback, and motivation for operators, letting them transform their work from event-driven to being sustainably profit-driven."
The Profit-driven Operation solution portfolio also includes the KBC Co-Pilot Program package of cloud-based services that display engineering and management-level SPIs, and remotely supports assets with domain expertise and insight. Other KBC consulting services such as Operational Excellence and Profit Improvement are available as required.
