Petro Chemical Plant Automation for Operational Visibility and Traceability

Summary

A large Petrochemical company operations were automated by SOFCOM, which has one of the largest petrochemical single-train plants in the world producing urea and fertilizers for agriculture. The company tested hundreds of production samples daily and ran hundreds of manufacturing processes. To manage its operations the company needed to digitize its entire chemistry management operation for real-time process visibility and quality control to reduce waste and enable plant-wide efficiency and productivity. Implementing Spectrum LIMS and Spectrum Process Management allowed the company to manage quality operations for multiple laboratories and process visualization. The performance resulted in an unprecedented reduction in waste, and productivity and efficiency enhancements leading to almost zero percent production losses. In addition, the solution enabled the company to attract additional investments and government approvals to acquire additional natural gas supply to expand its production capacity.

Company Description

One of the largest single-train urea plants with a production capacity of more than 2 million tons per year.

Selection of Sofcom

The company selected SpectrumLIMS and Spectrum Process Management after extensive testing and considering competitive software offerings globally. By looking at the software's functionality, scalability, and performance.

Partnering with Sofcom

The Sofcom team worked very closely to understand and map the plant's processes for the implementation work. The single-train plant was a unique experience for Sofcom's team to automate one of the world's largest chemical manufacturing operations. The company decided not to use third-party integrators due to the complexity and costs of implementing enterprise-wide Spectrum LIMS, Spectrum Process Management for multiple labs, and plant process. Instead, they chose the Sofcom team's industry expertise and reputation for rapid deployments.

Challenges

The company had several continuous chemical processes running in real time which made it critical to complete testing on time for process visibility to manage process chemistry. It was critical to have a single view of quality operations to meet the product quality and time-to-market requirements.

Implementation and integration of both LIMS and Spectrum Process Management modules.
Controlling and scheduling Laboratories teams and assigning workload.
Information dissemination and customized view as per each user requirement for such a large-scale laboratory and manufacturing operations.

Implementation

Implementation was finished in a record time of nine months with a complete sample testing protocol and process management along with EPA compliance.
Complex sample scheduling was implemented with all related process events along with comprehensive plant and process information based on time and day of the week.
Real-time visibility of quality control data was implemented, showing multiple process indicators via several dashboard views per process.

Automation

While automating the plant, several independent units and hundreds of complex processes were monitored, managed, and linked together to produce a holistic picture through real-time monitoring, statistical analysis, and dashboards.
Spectrum solution implementation provides visibility for efficient monitoring and management of ammonia and urea plant.
Multiple labs at the plant received tens of a hundred samples every day for testing from production lines, environment, water, and energy units, and also from services and support areas.
Sample test scheduling, a complex task for a plant running several production lines, implemented via Spectrum solution.
The company has its reagents manufacturing unit to produce reagents for its internal consumption. Sofcom also automated the Reagents production management.
Spectrum LIMS, workload assignment, and sample schedule sync create an efficient and controlled activity for Laboratory supervisors.

Results

The company achieved a holistic view of the entire plant with automatic data input from the plant and laboratories.
Automation enabled rapid insights for proactive decision-making for an extensive operation.
A huge efficiency increase was seen after Spectrum solution implementation.
Production losses went down to nearly 0% in many cases.
Environmental compliance management was automated for quick problem detection and meeting environmental agency's compliance.
High volume and complex laboratory operations were automated for faster turnaround time, reducing the cost of compliance, enhancing data integrity and multi-lab collaborative processes along with lab workforce automation.
Better Lab and production communication and improved collaboration resulted in operations visibility.
Automation of instrument calibration ensured better utilization of equipment.

Conclusion

Large manufacturing and laboratory operations cannot be efficiently managed without monitoring and control, an automation system that can provide complete visibility of multiple ongoing simultaneous operations. Conversely, work done in silos and with limited overall visibility and coordination lends to low productivity and higher cost of quality.

Overall, SpectrumLIMS and Specturm Process management solutions dramatically increased efficiency and productivity and reduced laboratory and factory operations waste. As a result, the company was able to have a single view of its entire operations eliminating human errors and reducing the cost of quality while meeting environmental regulations.

Partner with Sofcom

Spectrum solution is a comprehensive quality management platform that provides a data management system that ensures optimum quality control through real-time automated data acquisition and processing, result extraction, and process control analytics. In addition, spectrum solution architecture gives complete flexibility to configure the application according to your organization's needs.

The scalability provides an opportunity to integrate multiple plants and laboratories at different locations in one window; with a user-friendly interface and graphical dashboards, it is easy to visualize real-time information, trends, and statistical analytics.

Case Studies