CHALLENGE
A multinational leader in the energy sector found that data silos were making it difficult to manage costs, make accurate, timely decisions and avoid project delays. The company needed a 360-degree view of its assets, along with analytics and monitoring dashboards to help strengthen plant performance. In addition, it wanted a single source of truth that would help it optimize its engineering projects and boost overall competitiveness.
SOLUTION
The company chose NETVIBES data science solutions on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to help it manage its capital projects with precision. Asset Information Intelligence solutions provide it with a single source of truth, powerful data analysis and real-time insights, along with enhanced collaboration capabilities.
BENEFITS
Users are able to make better decisions, backed by the insights that come from connected data analytics. Real-time visibility on program data, coupled with a dashboard view that contextualizes knowledge, documents and resources, has enabled the company to drive more efficient project management, accelerate project delivery and reduce construction and operating costs.
Paving the Way for Sustainable Power
A carbon-neutral energy future through electricity – that is the mission of one multinational leader in the energy sector. To help achieve it, the company is building and operating several energy plants.
In capital projects like these, even the smallest problem can cause long delays and cost overruns – all of which deter customers and governments, whose backing is crucial. However, it was difficult for the organization to avoid these issues because project data was spread across many different systems and directories. This caused a lack of visibility over millions of complex data items for equipment to be manufactured, installed and tested. It made it difficult for engineers to identify issues and next steps, or to see the impact their decisions would have in other areas like purchasing, subcontracted studies or on site. As a result, previous projects had encountered delays and extra costs.
Breaking down those data silos was essential to optimize the company’s control of engineering process. As well as bringing its data together, it wanted to be able to analyze it and visualize it in a way that would help project managers:
- understand how to deliver each project on time, on budget and on specification,
- draw on past experience to continuously improve planning and minimize errors,
- identify potential risks ahead of time and take effective measures to reduce them.
The company had previously implemented NETVIBES data science solutions to provide change management dashboards and 360-degree views of assets. Next, it chose NETVIBES Asset Information Intelligence solutions on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, to create a virtual twin of its program management that would incorporate key performance indicators (KPIs) and support precise dashboards to show project progress.
A Single Source of Truth
At the heart of the solution, NETVIBES integrates data from the company’s main IT systems and delivers a complete, dashboard view of assets and construction progress. It orchestrates all the information around an object, asset or process – including 3D and 1D drawings, metadata and documents – and makes it available in the context the user needs.
NETVIBES collaborated closely with the organization to develop a proof-of-value application that combined on-premise data in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform with data science capabilities in the cloud. This allowed the company to see how the solution would work, and how it could meet both their current and future project visibility needs.
In particular, the solution stood out from competing offers because it allows the company to connect natively to all its data and gain real-time insights from it. Collaboration would be easier, since the 3DEXPERIENCE platform was designed to help disparate teams work together.
Mastering Requirements Management
Making the data intuitive has made all the difference, and that is where the solution’s semantic graph index (SGI) cloud comes in. It makes it possible to manage and cross-examine data from different sources and present the information in a way that makes sense to individual users and their job role. Having instant access to the right knowledge, processes and documentation has helped the company to enhance its capital project management in several ways.
One priority in the client roadmap is to be able to project KPIs onto the virtual twin, in effect building them into the project from the start. Users will be able to analyze the maturity of requirements and explore how they relate to objects in the system, in alignment with business rules. This would enable the organization to improve its management of requirements monitoring, carry out basic and detailed design reviews and validate the different construction phases of its energy power plant projects.
Historical analysis of requirements could also help users to respond more efficiently to any volatility in requirements. By factoring in the way requirements have evolved during past projects, the solution allows them to draw on the organization’s experience and anticipate future developments.
Intelligent Equipment Assignment
Assigning equipment is one area of project management that should be simple. In reality, it often involves project managers wading through details to identify the appropriate equipment and request it for their project – only to find that the piece they wanted is already in use elsewhere.
NETVIBES simplifies this process by bringing together all the data surrounding the equipment – its 3D representation in the 3DEXPERIENCE platform and the metadata that resides elsewhere. Each piece is cross-analyzed by family, metadata and zoning so that it’s easy to identify the most suitable components and apply them to the project.
With this information provided in a single, dashboard view, the project manager can filter out any equipment that is already assigned before they start their search. Then they can explore the available pieces to find the ones that are suitable for their current project. Once that’s done, they simply select the equipment they need and assign it by dragging and dropping it into the relevant task on the dashboard.
Optimizing Project Control
Having a single source of truth has empowered the company to improve its control of capital projects. For example, threads such as construction, engineering and sourcing all happen on different timelines throughout a project, but they are all critical when it comes to meeting deadlines and budget commitments. NETVIBES puts all these threads into context so that managers can anticipate and control project delays.
Predicted delays for ongoing projects are explained using similar past cases and recurrent behaviors that have been identified. By visualizing recurrent behaviors through time, the solution also indicates whether they are still relevant or have already been addressed – a crucial distinction for project managers who are deciding on their next steps.
As a result, the organization can create project plans much faster and optimize them in terms of objectives such as time, risk and resources, while aligning with established best practices and standards. Risks are minimized because the solution uses previous capital projects to identify them early on, so project managers can generate a timely mitigation plan.
Powering a Carbon-neutral Future
By using NETVIBES to break down silos and integrate data on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, the company has created a single source of truth that helps it to keep capital projects on track. The real-time insights and enhanced collaboration that the solution provides are driving more efficient management and tighter control, enabling faster delivery of projects and reduced construction and operating costs. As the organization looks ahead, these capabilities are helping it to build the foundation for more sustainable power provision.
“It is critical for managers to have access to all information generated by an energy power plant project, including pumps and all data for a given asset,” said Morgan Zimmermann, CEO of Dassault Systèmes NETVIBES. “As a single source of truth for all data in the platform, NETVIBES empowers the company to make better project decisions. In addition, other stakeholders can see project status at a glance, without having to dive deep into the platform.”
It is critical for managers to have access to all information generated by an energy power plant project. As a single source of truth for all data in the platform, NETVIBES empowers the company to make better project decisions.
Morgan Zimmermann, CEO of Dassault Systèmes NETVIBES
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