Press Release 2008

Vigilantplant Services from the Industrial Automation Division of Yokogawa Europe is a new portfolio of support capabilities designed to maximise customers’ asset availability and optimise plant productivity by deploying a variety of services in the areas of opportunity identification, solution implementation and lifecycle effectiveness.

By using the technical and organisational measures provided within Vigilantplant Services, Yokogawa believes that customers can achieve 20-30% improvements in areas such as productivity, process quality, product quality, performance and product diversification. In this context, Vigilantplant Services is a key platform in helping Yokogawa Europe’s customers achieve the goals of Asset Excellence and Operational Excellence that are inherent within the Yokogawa Vigilantplant concept.

The initial offerings under the Vigilantplant Services banner are in the areas of Opportunity Identification Services, which aid users in identifying areas of improvement, from planning to optimising the usage of existing industrial automation structures; Implementation Services, which are the implementation of appropriate solutions; and Lifecycle Effectiveness Services, which maintain and enhance automation infrastructure production processes that are already in place.

Opportunity Identification Services include areas such as plant analysis, comparative effectiveness analysis and management ‘brainstorming’ seminars, while Solution Implementation Services cover aspects such as alarm rationalisation, control-room design and regulatory control stabilisation.

Web-based free plant analysis is based on a questionnaire called Profit Finder, which takes information from the plant and its systems and estimates the potential benefits of different scenarios in terms of efficiency and productivity improvements. The comparative effectiveness analysis, on the other hand, uses benchmarking of key performance indicators related to operational expenditure, measured against an industry database to assess the effective use of the automation and IT infrastructures.

Solution implementation services make heavy use of Yokogawa’s InsightSuite AE system for asset monitoring and health prediction, and bring together areas such as safety excellence – via alarm rationalisation, downtime analysis and incident analysis; plant operation optimisation, based on alarm consolidation and control-room design; and plant operation stabilisation, using control-loop improvements to achieve regulatory control stabilisation.

The final phase of Vigilantplant Services concentrates on life-cycle excellence, and incorporates areas such as service and support, maintenance management, inventory management, migration support and regular effectiveness analysis.

One of the first practical implementations of Vigilantplant Services within Europe is the recently announced collaboration between Yokogawa Europe and Rovsing Dynamics A/S, in which the two companies are collaborating to assist upstream and downstream oil and gas producers to achieve operational excellence through automated, intelligent operation and asset management solutions.

As a result of the new partnership, the unique Rovsing Dynamics OPENpredictor™ solution for machinery health prediction is being offered as an integrated part of Yokogawa’s Vigilantplant solution for complete industrial automation. The co-operation covers solutions for offshore oil and gas production, FPSOs (floating production, storage and offloading vessels), downstream LNG production facilities, refineries and onshore gas compression stations.