Safety First! Successful Process Management Academy 2012 in Antwerp

Related Vendors

Intelligent Automation For Safety, Security and Sustainability

Apart from energy awareness, especially intelligent automation was a lively discussed tool for additional sustainability and efficiency. Speakers from different industries presented projects that incorporated new ways of automation and centralisation but also additional safety and security features. Automation concepts and the remote handling of production assets could, as Wim van Meijeren of NAM, the Shell-Exxon JV producing the gas of the Dutch natural gas fields, explained, also increase availability and productivity: Automation can help to quickly change the status of an asset from production to waiting or even alternative routes, he explained. "Automation is patient," van Meijeren noted.

The Automation Paradox – Were It can Go Wrong

Automation can, nevertheless, also give a dangerous wrong impression of total control and safety, as Dr. Andrew Lichnowski, chairman of the EEMUA, explained: If personel is cut and the dependency on automation to big, dangerous situations could go unnoticed due to instrumentation failure or a lack of understanding of what the actual process does - something, Lichnowski called the "Automation Paradox." Awareness und understanding could not be replaced by technology, the participants agreed.

Additional Information

PMA 2012

Highlights From the PMA

Valentijn de Leeuw of ARC Advisory Group sums up the highlights of PMA 2012:

Highlights of the Workshops

The brand protection and supply chain integrity workshop surfaced practices to improve the business case for identification and e-pedigree by neutralizing the cost of regulatory compliance by countering losses due to liability claims and sales lost. The energy management workshop concluded that the low hanging fruit has disappeared, but that putting the right information in the hands of people,good process engineering and heat integration and strategic execution of energy management initatives can still yield year-on-year energy efficiency improvements. In the process safety workshop the impact of human factors and engineering principles were identified as critical factors. The cyber security workshop was attended by as many as 40 people, and its results will be reported on shortly.

Presentations From Different Industries

Dr. Herbert Maier of Clariant, member of the NAMUR board, explained the companies’ sustainability approach ranging from using non-edible renewable raw materials, to reducing material, steam, electicity, compressed air and ‘cold’ energy. A balanced ‘system’ called “e-Watch” with a technical, a human and a management component, saved 100,000 t/a CO₂. e-Watch being implemented as a continuous improvement approach will continue to save energy and other resources, although the low hanging fruit has been picked.

Wim van Meijeren of NAM, the Shell-Exxon JV producing the gas of the Dutch natural gas field, reported on the renovation of the production sites and of the electrical, instrumentation, automation and actuation. A 780000 tag Centum VP DCS, designed as a grape of autonomous systems for each of the 29 production sites, together with sustainable design principles, has led to significant improvement in reliability, 3% savings in electrical energy, 25% less emissions and a 0.5% capacity increase.

Tsjoi Tsim of BT Advise gave a design methodology for mission critical entworks, in particular in the petrochemical and refining sectors and showed a examples ranging from astonishing simple to spectacularly complex applications.

Stéphane Potier of B&R exposed the Open Safety protocol with a real life example at Voest Alpine steel factory.

Mario Rebolledo Reported on HIMA’s Multi-Vendor Integration Strategy

Andrew Lichnovski, gave EEMUA ‘s view on the causes of the Buncefield liquid fuel storage site. A multitude of dysfunctions, led to the failure of informing the operators and protecting a tank of overfilling. Andrew pointed out which behavior, management practices, and automation engineering design practices could avoid these disasters.

Rolf Panzke of Siemens, reported on customized instrumentation and measurements leading to significant material and energy savings, and increased uptime. He also reported on standard technology for condition based monitoring with sustainability gains in the same domains.

Michael Buesselmann of Yokogawa reported on the automation of startup of a separation column and a reactor at Evonik Industries, using the Exapilot package on top of the DCS. Up to 4000 instructions, logically sequenced, until then undocumented and mastered by a only few operators, are now executed in an optimal way, leading to very important savings in startup time to full load, emissions, off-spec material and associated energy savings. In the case of the reactor startup, the mixture composition comes close to an explosive area. The increased consistency of the startup trajectory led to reduced interruptions of the procedure by automated safety shutdowns.

Safety, Security and Sustainability – People Make the Difference

To construct systems safe and sustainable, simulation could play an important role, as several presentations underlined: Modern simulation methods could help to develop alternative and more efficient production processes, identify weak spots or provide realistic training for engineers and operators. Several speakers underlined the importance of simulation tools and presented interesting projects.

Also simulation could, nevertheless, not eliminate the need for know how and understanding. Things would tend to get messy, an attendant explained, whenever design was done from above and people not involved in technical processes were responsible for the selection of components and technology. For, in the end, it's the people that make the difference.

(ID:32390450)