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Asset Performance Management (APM) Software

Advanced Petrochemicals Embraces Modernized APM for Operational Improvements

Introduction

Introduction

Ensuring that software investments are up-to-date on its latest versions is critical in creating a digitally secure and high-performing operation. Over time, without updating, organizations may not see the full potential on its investment. Updating provides organizations with new infrastructure, features and functionality.

 

In May 2005, Advanced Petrochemical started construction on its manufacturing plant that was designed to produce the building blocks of everyday goods such as personal care products, fresh food packaging, plastics, construction materials, textiles and much more. In 2008, the integrated plant located in Jubail Industrial City on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabi produced its first batch. The plant is designed to produce more than 455,000 tons of propylene per year.

 

Due to the complex nature of Advanced Petrochemicals’ business, the organization determined it was mission critical to invest in digital technologies that support the continued growth and efficiency of the business.

 

Challenges

Since their inception, Advanced Petrochemicals has focused on ways to optimize maintenance cost, improve reliability, and increase production rate. This dedication led the company to invest in multiple initiatives using GE Digital’s APM.

 

One of Advanced key investments is implementing proactive asset management improvement programs to develop standard work processes, leverage various data sources with ease and enhance the culture of reliability within the organization.  As part of their investment, GE Digital’s Asset Performance Management (APM) was deployed on-premises for the APM Strategy, APM Reliability, APM Integrity and APM Safety applications. This allowed Advanced Petrochemicals to begin to address data, compliance, and process challenges that were inhibiting the ability to optimize costs while increasing reliability and production.

 

Another challenge faced was the ability to leverage APM to the best of its ability due to an eight-year gap in updating the solution. Without the update, Advanced Petrochemicals did not have access to new software features that could directly impact reaching organizational goals.

 

Outcomes

In June 2022, Advanced Petrochemicals began the process of updating their APM applications and infrastructure from V3.6 to V4.6. As the update accelerated, it was determined that a closer collaboration with GE Digital Services allowed for Advanced Petrochemicals to uncover more challenges that could be solved with APM. With this realization, the team agreed to extend the scope of the project and initially agreed on a 6-month timeline for completion due to the technicality of the upgrade and the massive amount of data involved since launching V3.6 in 2014.

 

During the implementation of V4.6, Advanced Petrochemicals and GE Digital Services agreed to accelerate the time-to-value of the upgrade by collaborating to reduce the 6-month timeline for completion down to just 4-months. By reducing the time to upgrade, Advanced Petrochemicals was able to get its operation access to the latest and greatest APM technology faster.

 

Ultimately, the increased scope and reduced timeline resulted in a successful upgrade to V4.6 that provided more than 8-years of functionality improvement, new features, enhanced performance and a better user experience.

 

Due to the partnership between Advanced Petrochemicals and GE Digital Services, the organization was able to address mission critical challenges & see tangible outcomes with APM such as:

 

  1. Enhanced Inspection Strategies: With the upgraded V4 version, the RBI module generated detailed inspection strategies, which ensured more effective inspection activities, and lowered compliance costs with external auditors. Furthermore, inspection strategies are evaluated with changing equipment conditions change, to ensure fixed assets continue to run safely and effectively.
     
  2. Better Data Analysis and Visualization: GE APM V4 provided the Advanced team with the right tools that helped them pre-build and pre-configure graphs and dashboards based on real time data, which can be used anytime during the year in their reports and presentations. This eliminated the time-consuming recurring activity to analyze CMMS work history information.
     
  3. Assets Risk Presentation using Corporate Risk Matrix: The APM upgrade helped Advanced to map risk values to one corporate risk matrix which allowed for better understanding of the risk across multiple teams and meet internal and external audit expectations.
     
  4. Compliance Audits: The upgraded APM allowed the Advanced team to create predefined queries and dashboards to aggregate information and have it readily available in a centralized fashion to answer compliance auditors’ questions. This included storing reference documents, proofs, justifications, etc. electronically within APM.
     
  5. Data Loaders and Export/Import Tools: With the APM upgrade, the Data loader tool helped the Advanced team to load their data in APM faster and with proper quality checks that happened during the loading jobs. This helped improve resource productivity.
     
  6. Bulk Features: The bulk review and approval tools in the upgrade saved valuable time to review and approve reports.
     
  7. APM Dashboards: The APM upgrade provided Advanced with a standard set of dashboards that presented data in a user-friendly manner that helped users identify gaps and data issues easily and fix them promptly.
     
  8. Compliance with the IEC61511 Standard: The GE APM upgrade provided Advanced with an upgraded view and features to fulfill the new standard requirement of IEC61511. Additionally, it provided access to the new Exida failure rate data.
     
  9. Key Reliability Metrics: Improved visibility to management, and better understanding of key bad actors in the asset operation allowed Advanced to better support their reliability improvement program.
     
  10. Site Expansion: Upgrading software makes it easier to expand functionality to more sites. By doing so, Advanced is able to generate more value from APM and on-board more users.