Emerson digitally transforms turnarounds to seize US$25 billion savings opportunity for customers

This new approach will provide scope assurance, schedule assurance and improved labour effectiveness while minimising emergent and discovery work. The result is reduced labour and materials costs of up to 10% and shortened schedules of up to 6%.

“About 25% of turnaround projects run over-budget, and more than 50% fail to meet targeted schedules - mainly due to discovery and emergent work during turnaround execution,” said Johan Claassen, vice president, Global Lifecycle Services, Emerson Automation Solutions. “We can now provide customers scope assurance across all their asset classes to avoid last-minute surprises during turnaround execution.”

Market research indicates that 60% of the turnaround cost comes from fixed process assets such as distillation columns, heat exchangers, piping, and structural supports. Emerson is expanding its capability to provide predictive diagnostics, data analytics, and scope planning expertise to these critical assets. Emerson’s comprehensive strategy is to leverage the investment in automation and analytics used to operate the plant to transform the planning and execution of turnarounds by combining this with deep industry expertise, proven work practices and a broad portfolio of lifecycle services offerings.

On an average turnaround, these benefits could save US$3.1 million in labour and materials and shorten the schedule by at least two days. According to Emerson, these savings multiplied across an estimated 8000 turnarounds performed annually could save customers as much as US$25 billion per year in opportunity costs across all process industries worldwide.

Other elements of the new framework include:

• Scheduling early engagement with Emerson’s Operational Certainty Consulting and turnaround experts to perform a discovery workshop.
• Emerson performs walkdowns using a digital mobile app to digitise the installed base and provide a visual inspection of the asset with report and recommendations.
• Applying turnaround expertise to optimise budgets and scheduling based on existing resources and production requirements.
• Leveraging Emerson’s Location Awareness, a new personnel location system within the Plantweb digital ecosystem, to manage safety by reducing labour congestion and inefficiencies of not only employees, but also contractors and temporary workers onsite during turnarounds.
• The new Mobile Service and Command Centre acts as a central point where all turnaround asset data is monitored and analysed through Emerson’s experts. It also serves as an inventory warehouse stocked with parts. For unplanned needs, it provides a direct factory link to expedite parts for shipping through the Emerson QuickShip programme.

“By providing a consistent, effective, decision-driven solution grounded on a solid digital technology foundation, we can revolutionise turnarounds for the global process industries,” said Claassen, “This empowers customers to reduce cost and schedule, ensure worker safety, and create a path to peer-leading performance, recouping billions of dollars in lost profits in the process.”

Read the article online at: https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/product-news/04102018/emerson-digitally-transforms-turnarounds-to-seize-us25-billion-savings-opportunity-for-customers/