The global process industries have been riding an economic rollercoaster for more than 2 years, making agility and performance enhancement the order of the day. “To be profitable today, agility is key,” says AspenTech Senior Vice President Blair Wheeler. “You need to make better decisions, faster, in response to rapidly shifting market dynamics. At the same time, you need to lower costs while maximizing the efficiency of your overall operations.”
AspenTech has introduced a new version of its flagship product, aspenONE, with significant improvements in the advanced process control and petroleum supply chain integration areas. The release is called aspenONE V7 Manufacturing and Supply Chain (MSC) to emphasize the need to improve manufacturing processes and improve the agility and integration of the entire petroleum supply chain.
Earlier this year AspenTech delivered the V7.1 release of aspenOne Engineering for batch manufacturing environments, such as pharmaceuticals and speciality chemicals. It offers innovations in batch process development and solubility modeling.
With the MSC release, AspenTech has attempted to bring advanced process control to a new level with the release of the Aspen Control Platform. Enhancements include a new drag-and-drop advanced process control environment and the ability to do state-space control with multiple controllers in the same environment.
“The new KPI reporting capability with diagnostics provides a key insight into how controllers are behaving and whether or not any remediation may be required,” says Dr. Wilfried Kossmann of Bayern Oil, a joint venture including BP. “Bayern Oil is also very excited about AspenTech’s Adaptive Modeling capability. Being able to identify model deterioration, diagnose what the problem is and then remodel the process all within an online framework is a major step forward in performance capability.”
Dr. Kai Dadhe of Evonik Degussa adds, “Previously, the benefits we received from APC were confined to only certain processes. The new APC platform provides a cost-effective way to implement process control on smaller units and extend those operational benefits throughout our organization.”
The new release of aspenONE provides supply chain capabilities that integrate refinery operations with business processes for demand management, distribution and long-range planning.
“One of the key challenges when integrating the supply chain is to ensure that the individual organizations—for example Refining, Supply, or Marketing—feel that the decisions being made accurately reflect the impacts or costs on their organizations,” says Phil Koenig, manager of engineering and analytical services for Marathon Oil Company. “Using aspenONE V7, we will be able to combine high-fidelity organizational models, allowing us to accurately determine the incentives, costs and impacts of supply chain decisions.”
AspenTech says that it has also included IT innovations in aspenONE V7. These include a flexible, token-based licensing model that allows customers to use the software they need when and where they need it; the Aspen Licensing Center, which Aspen says makes it easier to identify and replicate software usage best practices; and “Virtualization-ready” support for leading virtualization technologies from Microsoft, VMware and Citrix.
For more information on the entire aspenONE V7 product line, visit www.aspentech.com/V7.
