Posts tagged ‘maintenance’
PetroSkills Announces New O&M JV
PetroSkills announced the startup of PetroSkills O&M, a new joint venture with the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). Focusing on both operations and maintenance (O&M) technicians employed in upstream, midstream and downstream roles, PetroSkills O&M offers companies a full slate of both instructor-led training and e-learning content.
Ron Hinn, Managing Director of PetroSkills O&M, described the new offering as PetroSkills’ response to “the bigger crew change” that will be occurring across operator ranks over the next decade. “The demographic changes impacting the engineering ranks within E&P represent a small percentage of the numbers that will be impacted in the operations and maintenance ranks,” Hinn said.
PetroSkills O&M currently offers competency development and competency management resources for Production Field Operations, Gas Process Operations and Drilling Operations, and efforts are now underway to build out capabilities within the Pipeline, Refinery and PetroChemical operations and maintenance disciplines.
O&M represents the fourth discipline “vertical” for PetroSkills to enter. The rigor and processes utilized to build PetroSkills’ offerings within the E&P, Facilities and HSE sectors will also be applied to O&M. This includes the use of member company subject matter experts to direct and maintain detailed competency profiles for each technician discipline. The result is an “industry shared viewpoint” of the skills or competencies required to perform successfully at a given level. Training offerings are subsequently aligned to deliver the necessary competencies.
What Is PetroSkills?
PetroSkills provides unique, competency-based training programs – not just a collection of courses. Course content is based on detailed skill and competency maps developed with input from member companies. Each discipline is fully described through these competency skill maps to ensure that professionals can identify the competencies needed at their individual level.
Competency maps are available to both individuals and companies via a Web-based Competency Analysis Tool called CAT Enterprise, which allows professionals to track their development, determine what skills they need, and create a customized plan to close learning gaps.
The member curriculum advisors and the PetroSkills Board must approve each course, ensuring practical, up-to-date, relevant training. After attending a PetroSkills course, professionals will return to their workplace and immediately apply the skills learned to create value. Both the PetroSkills coursework and the instructors are reviewed approved by the PetroSkills Board and member curriculum advisors.
Invensys Releases New Virtual Reality Training Solution
Invensys Operations Management announced the commercial availability of its new EYESim virtual reality immersive training solution. The first industrial virtual reality training solution based on first-principle simulation and augmented reality, EYESim technology enables engineers and operators to see and safely interact with the plant and the processes they control.
Using and applying gaming skills familiar to younger employees, the EYESim solution also appeals to new plant employees and experienced engineers. It combines virtual reality technologies with high-fidelity process and control simulation, computer-based maintenance and documentation management and other applications to provide a highly realistic and safe training environment for improving operating efficiency and skills. Simulations are driven by the company’s DYNSIM® process simulator, FSIM Plus software, I/A Series® control system emulation and other compatible programs.
“The increasing complexity of plants, combined with a changing workforce, demands next-generation tools that can safely and interactively train new operators and engineers without putting them, the community or the environment at risk,” said Tobias Scheele, VP advanced applications, Invensys Operations Management. “This system provides a stable, realistic environment for practicing routine operational and maintenance functions, as well as rarely performed volatile tasks such as plant shutdowns. In addition, using computer models of real equipment allows endless experimentation without ever taking the equipment offline, mitigating risk to production as well.”
By merging virtual plant imagery with screens from asset management or other application software, the Invensys solution creates a computer-generated representation of either a real or proposed process plant. Using a stereoscopic headset, trainees enter a completely immersive environment in which they can move throughout the plant. Such freedom is possible because the virtual environment is rendered at 60 frames per second, significantly faster than what can be achieved by traditional, non-real-time rendering.
EYESim technology is geared toward the energy, chemical, oil and gas, and other vital process industries as they face knowledge management, training and retention challenges brought on by an aging and dwindling industry workforce.
“The loss of experienced workers and associated knowledge is increasing the risk of conducting safe, reliable and efficient plant operations, but the EYESim solution creates an environment in which operators and engineers can quickly absorb and utilize the wealth of process data and control system information that is available to them,” said Tom Fiske, PhD, senior analyst with ARC Advisory Group. “Traditional operator training simulators play a significant role in protecting knowledge assets, and these systems are evolving into increasingly more sophisticated simulators, such as the new solution from Invensys, which combines virtual reality and immersive technology with high-fidelity modeling to enhance knowledge protection and improve operator performance. Additionally, outside operators and other operational team members can use such simulators to provide more realistic and complete training experiences, or to assist in other asset management and operational activities.”
New Proficy Maintenance Gateway Release Improves Real-Time Operations
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, a unit of GE Enterprise Solutions, announced the availability of Proficy® Maintenance Gateway 2.0 to help customers avoid costly equipment failures and reduce asset maintenance costs. The software enhances the company’s Proficy software suite – a platform for driving reliable, profitable operations in a plant and across the enterprise – by ensuring that maintenance operations are integrated into each company’s journey toward operational excellence. The product can scale up from a simple condition monitoring system to a sophisticated orchestration to help maximize asset utilization and reliability.
“The timeliness of this product release in light of today’s global economic climate is important,” said Sheila Kester, Business General Manager, GE Fanuc Operations Management Software. “By keeping the Production and Maintenance departments ‘in synch,’ an organization eliminates the costly delays in responding to the plant’s evolving operational dynamics. Furthermore, the continuity and accuracy in the information flow between production and maintenance teams allows the organization to take proactive steps to eliminate hidden costs before they’re incurred.”
The new release extends the proven capabilities of Proficy Maintenance Gateway by providing a new automatic measurement point update module, enhanced write-back functions from the enterprise to the plant systems, and new adaptors to Enterprise Asset Maintenance (EAM) applications, such as SAP’s PM module and newer versions of MAXIMO®. The broad range of connectivity options, ease of use by plant personnel, and ability to incrementally scale from small to large installations make the solution desirable to companies in asset-intensive industries.
“Proficy Maintenance Gateway acts as an integration engine of the Production and Maintenance processes of an enterprise, continuously driving business-critical efficiencies in both departments in real-time,” said Coleman Easterly, Product General Manager, GE Fanuc Operations Management Software. “This is achieved by leveraging and extracting more from the core capabilities of our Proficy Plant Applications family while doing the same with the EAM systems in an organization.”
Proficy Maintenance Gateway tracks and helps reduce the Mean-Time-To-Repair in “corrective maintenance” cases while working continuously to monitor usage of equipment and automatically ordering “preventive maintenance” orders for improved performance. The product is designed for maintenance and/or production personnel. Out-of-the-box EAM connectors accelerate deployments and reduce installation time to days rather than weeks or months. Also, the enhanced rules engine offers more flexibility for time-based meters and status updates of Work Orders to the control system.
“Proficy Maintenance Gateway enables an organization’s existing asset management system to drive the right set of maintenance strategies for their equipment in a timely manner,” continued Easterly. “It takes into consideration the current, real-time dynamics of the plant equipment and production, rather than being solely based on a set of pre-planned conditions and assumptions. This real-time synchronization between production and maintenance can dramatically reduce unplanned and hidden costs in the short term, while continuously driving improvement in plant reliability in the long run.”
Mid South Fabrication & Welding Joins Building Enterprises Selling PODS™
Mid South Fabrication & Welding Inc., provider of pipe spool and industrial skid manufacturing services, announced today that it has joined the Turnaround, Shutdown & Maintenance Selling PODS™ recently launched by Building Enterprises Inc., provider of Professional Outsourced Development and Sales (PODS). This revolutionary new selling consortium leverages a single sales team among multiple, non-competing product and service vendors who are all trying to reach the same target market of sales prospects. The Turnaround, Shutdown & Maintenance PODS™ targets domestic Refinery and Petrochemical companies seeking to maximize production by minimizing downtime.
Mid South Fabrication & Welding specializes in pipe spool fabrication. Their main forte is piping spool sub-assemblies and complete turnkey skid-mounted units that meet the ANSI B31.3 Code. In late October, Mid South will receive their ASME code stamp, which will expand their services greatly.
Mid South has the engineering capabilities to do mechanical design, structural design, process engineering and pressure vessel design. They wish to sell their services to contractors in the Gulf Coast petrochemical sector, specifically to estimators and maintenance supervisors, but in the current economy they do not wish to hire full-time sales staff.
“We are looking for pipe spool projects we can handle at our fabrication shop in Conroe, TX,” said Mid South General Manager Mark Watson. “We also have a mobile welding rig we can use for on-site applications. We have done stainless steel welding projects for Exxon, Formosa Plastics, Houston Pipe Benders, Nalco Chemical, SIP Parsons and Siemens, just to name a few. We were in search of a manufacturer’s rep organization that would be a good fit to market our products and services.”
By joining Building Enterprises’ Turnaround, Shutdown & Maintenance Selling PODS™, Mid South will share a full-service sales team with other non-competing companies seeking to sell their products and services to the same petrochemical target market. This novel arrangement includes an inside sales team to manage appointments, an outside sales team to meet with prospects, determine their needs and qualify them for the sale, a sales manager to report weekly on all the calls and meetings Building Enterprises does for the PODS™ members, and various marketing and media services to spread the word about PODS™ members’ products and services.
Buddy Rhodes, President of Building Enterprises Inc., commented: “Our unique Selling PODS™ business model employs the concept of ‘Leverage By Sharing.’ Similar to a co-op where multiple farmers share the cost and use of an expensive tractor, Selling PODS™ are a low-cost way to share a full service sales team with several other companies trying to reach the same prospects. Such an arrangement also offers surprising synergies through referrals and cross-selling.”
About Mid South Fabrication & Welding
Founded in 1992 in Cleveland, TX, as Mid South Industrial Services, today Mid South Fabrication & Welding specializes in the custom design and building of complex piping systems for a lump-sum, turnkey price. All of our welders are qualified in accordance to ASME Section IX. Our welding procedures include processes in GTAW, SMAW, FCAW, SAW and GMAW and are qualified to many base metal groups such as carbon, low-temp carbon, 4130 alloy, and stainless steel, including Duplex, Hastelloy, Alloy 20, Aluminum and Chrome groups.
Mid South’s business motto is “True value for our clients.” Mid-South understands the importance of loyalty and realizes that customer service and pride in workmanship are priceless assets, no matter how large or small the job. For more information, visit: http://www.midsouthtexas.com/
About Building Enterprises Inc.
Since its founding in 1982, Building Enterprises has been accelerating its clients’ business growth through strategic sales processes, enabling them to double or triple the effectiveness of their sales efforts. The company provides full selling teams to its clients, including inside and outside sales staff, sales management, marketing and channel sales partnering. BEI Selling PODS™ provide a way for several companies to share an outsourced sales team targeting a common market of sales prospects.
Currently, Building Enterprises is developing the following Selling PODS™:
- Turnaround, Shutdown & Maintenance – targeting the Refinery and Petrochemical market;
- PetroComputing IT – targeting the Upstream Oil & Gas Software market; and
- Financial and Tax – targeting CFOs at mid-sized organizations.
For more information, visit www.beweb.us
Invensys Brings Immersive Virtual Reality to Life
Invensys Process Systems (IPS) unveiled its Immersive Virtual Reality Process technology, a next-generation human machine interface (HMI) solution that will revolutionize the way engineers and operator trainees see and interact with the plant and the processes they control.
When it becomes commercially available later this year, IPS expects Immersive Virtual Reality Process to deliver benefits that will help improve plant safety and security, ensure environmental and regulatory accountability, and increase production and efficiency while controlling feedstock and material costs. The energy and process industries will also be able to apply the technology to meet the knowledge-management, training and retention challenges they encounter in the face of an aging and dwindling industry workforce.
IPS’ Immersive Virtual Reality Process can create a 3D computer-generated representation of either a real or proposed process plant. Via a stereoscopic headset, users enter a totally immersive environment in which they can move through the plant in any direction. Such freedom is made possible because the virtual environment is rendered at 60 frames per second, significantly faster than what can be achieved by traditional rendering.
“The ability to simulate complex processes in connection with virtual actions allows the user to directly experience an environment that changes over time, making it more effective at transferring skills learned in training to the work environment,” said Maurizio Rovaglio, director, IPS global consulting. “And because rarely performed volatile tasks such as plant shutdowns can be rehearsed in a stable, realistic environment, users and operator trainees have the opportunity to learn and make mistakes without putting themselves, the community or the environment at risk. In addition to that, using computer models of real equipment allows endless experimentation without ever taking the equipment off line, mitigating risk to production as well.”
IPS will make Immersive Virtual Reality Process truly realistic by applying its proprietary DYNSIM™ software to emulate the plant environment, linking process simulation models with physical-spatial models to create virtually any scenario that a user could encounter in real life. The inherent flexibility of IPS’ technology results in fast and economical program configuration.
The company’s new solution has been designed for a wide range of scenarios, including process design, maintenance engineering and plant safety. IPS expects Immersive Virtual Reality Process to be widely used in the next generation of process training programs.
“Immersive Virtual Reality Process is another example of IPS developing and delivering innovative solutions that help our clients solve their most critical business issues,” said Tobias Scheele, VP advanced applications, IPS. “The solution continues to be tested in a variety of installations, and we are beginning to realize its full potential and value-add possibilities. When it becomes available in the second half of this year, we believe it will provide immediate, far-reaching benefits to clients spanning the process industries.”
PetroComputing 