Invensys provided 100 journalists, industry analysts, customers and partners with a dramatic demonstration of the power of the new InFusion enterprise control system.

Invensys provided 100 journalists, industry analysts, customers and partners with a dramatic demonstration of the power of the new InFusion enterprise control system during a global technology launch last month at the JFK Library in Boston, USA. The launch event featured presentations by Ulf Henriksson, Invensys' CEO; Mike Caliel, President of Invensys Process Systems; Charles Johnson, Worldwide Manufacturing Industry Managing Director at Microsoft's Enterprise Partner Group; Rick Bullotta, Vice President, Manufacturing Applications at SAP, and other industry dignitaries. The demonstration, which used the fictional 'DaCosta Corporation' as a setting, integrated 18 different plant-level and enterprise-level applications from Invensys and five other vendors into a common InFusion system.

This system used OpenO and M schema based on the ISA S95 model and Mimosa to integrate DaCosta's plant-level operations and maintenance departments with corporate planning and operations management departments.

As depicted in the demonstration, the 'DaCosta Corporation' is an integrated gas production and chemical manufacturing operation in which natural gas liquids (NGL), a byproduct of the DeCosta gas plant, are used as feedstock for the DaCosta fractionation plant, and n-butane from the fractionation plant is used as feedstock for the DaCosta chemical plant, which then converts the n-butane into higher value isobutane.

The DaCosta gas, fractionation, and chemical plants were fully simulated in Foxboro I/A Series automation system control blocks.

(Although the DaCosta Corporation is fictional, the plant models - and the solution demonstrated - were based largely on actual Invensys customer applications and real-world domain knowledge).

Two scenarios followed.

The first illustrated how DeCosta managers reacted to a potential business opportunity prior to InFusion.

The second scenario demonstrated how the InFusion enterprise control system opened up an entirely new realm of opportunities, even though the actual production, process control, and other assets had not changed.

As the 'life before InFusion', scenario unfolded, the audience learned that, rather than functioning as a well-integrated entity, the three DaCosta plants largely operated independently.

This was due to the lack of real-time visibility between the three plants and between the plants and the corporate offices.

Even at the individual plant level, there was little co-operation between the onsite operations and maintenance departments.

(Readers in many of today's so-called integrated enterprises might be able to relate to this scenario).

This lack of real-time visibility across the enterprise ultimately resulted in a major mistake: the rushed acceptance of a contract that ended up costing the company millions of dollars in penalties, re-work, and lost profit opportunity, while straining its credibility with a key customer.

The audience learned that, this mistake occurred, not because of incompetence, but because the individual plant managers made the right decisions for their plants based on the available information, but not the right decisions for the business as a whole.

In the 'life with InFusion' scenario that followed, DaCosta Corporation's vice president of operations, plant managers, and a newly appointed corporate planner are now empowered with real-time operational, condition monitoring, and maintenance information, plus transactional business information, that enabled them to collaboratively make the right overall business decision about a potentially lucrative, but fast-breaking business opportunity.

The opportunity was a contract to sell an additional 120 million standard cubic feet (SCF) of natural gas for the next ten days at a 25 cent per SCF premium.

The key questions that needed to be answered almost immediately were: can the gas plant produce the additional gas?; what will the downstream affects be at the fractionation and chemical plants?; and will the contract be profitable for the company as a whole?.

Using the InFusion Collaboration Wall (a 3m long video display) and other InFusion View, InFusion Access and InFusion Enterprise Integration tools to display information from diverse plant, enterprise, and portal applications, the geographically dispersed DaCosta plant managers, corporate planner, and operations VP put their heads together to review real-time production information and performance dashboards from the control systems displayed in Microsoft Excel, real-time condition monitoring information and maintenance schedules from the maintenance system, raw materials cost data from the ERP system, plus commodity futures projections.

In this manner, they were able to rapidly and accurately determine that: the gas plant could easily provide the increased capacity required; a planned maintenance shutdown in the fractionation plant could safely be deferred to absorb much of the increased natural gas liquids (NGL) that would be produced; increased isobutane production in the fractionation plant could largely be offset by scaling back production in the chemical plant; and a look at commodity futures projections validated the economics of the opportunity.

As illustrated in this demonstration, increased visibility between the individual plants and between the plants and the enterprise enabled plant and business personnel at the fictional (but not unrealistic) DaCosta Corporation to work together effectively to enhance business agility in a manner that was not previously possible.

The new InFusion enterprise control system combines industry-leading capabilities from across Invensys with advanced enterprise information and integration technologies from both Microsoft and SAP to dramatically reduce integration costs.

With InFusion technology, most existing plant floor and enterprise systems can now be cost-effectively integrated into a common system.

In conjunction with a suite of new performance services, Invensys' InFusion system will help industrial enterprises more effectively align plant operations and maintenance departments with the business to optimise overall asset performance management.