Yokogawa Marex Ltd of Cowes, UK, the global manufacturing execution systems (MES) centre for the Yokogawa industrial automation group, today (9th February 2005) launches its latest operational excellence package for the oil and gas industry, Visa-OM.

To meet the demand from refinery operators for an easy to use operational system that provides tank farm and refinery offsite oil management functionality, Yokogawa Marex has developed Visa-OM, which tracks and manages the movements of crude oil and other intermediate and finished product liquids across refineries and petrochemical plants. It can be implemented in refineries with high or low levels of automation, making it particularly attractive for upgrading older refineries.

Visa-OM is a powerful model-based software tool that incorporates mass balancing techniques, raw measurements and other data to analyse the information in terms of movements of refinery material. Integrated within Visa-OM are the Exaquantum plant information management system (PIMS) and the Visa model-based suite of advanced value-added operational excellence applications.

Visa-OM keeps track of material compositions and properties of oil products. An additional benefit is superior control of a movement of product between tanks and/or plants - in particular mass balance/data reconciliation techniques which help to dramatically reduce the number of unmeasured movements by resolving multiple simultaneous flows in and out of individual tanks. It also enables refinery management to monitor losses, which can cost hundred of thousands of dollars per year. Environmental safety is improved – helping to prevent the overfilling of tanks.

Three key Visa-OM operational tools are tank movement ranking, stock accounting and advanced tank level and movement alarms. The tank ranking report tells operators at a glance the ranking of tanks movements to be dealt with; when they have to start and stop pumps, shut off values and in which order. The stock accounting function provides a daily report on levels of refinery stock with volume correction factors and related calculations.

Visa-OM provides a complete exception analysis which accounts for differences in tank masses between recorded and measured stock amounts.

The advanced alarm system warms operators of unexpected or unusual behaviour. For example if a tank begins to fill or empty when there is no movement defined for it, Visa-OM will alert the operator.

Shell in Australia
Visa-OM was developed in response to demand from Shell Australia which made the decision in 2004 to replace its 15 year old, locally developed oil movements system running in its two Australian refineries at Geelong in Victoria and Clyde in New South Wales. An existing customer of Yokogawa, Shell required a model-based application which incorporated the benefits of the existing Exaquantum plant information management system (PIMS) and the Visa model-based suite of advanced value-added applications.

John McGuire, Shell Clyde and Geelong’s special projects manager, identified what he believed to be the key to the success of the project: “Oil movements projects have traditionally been complex and involved, with a great deal of custom engineering effort required. This new approach is a more straightforward implementation because of the largely configurable capabilities of Exaquantum and Visa applications.”

Nigel Bowden, Yokogawa Marex Ltd Managing Director adds: “Visa-OM provides the long-awaited step-change in the science of tank farm management. Excellence flows only from cutting-edge innovation. That is what we have with Visa-OM.”



Notes for Editors:
1. Yokogawa is a world leader in information management systems for process industries. The company provides a systems development and integration capability specializing in integrated information systems for process industries throughout the world. The Yokogawa 'Exaquantum' Plant Information Management System (PIMS) delivers benefits for plant operators in many process industries in most parts of the world. Yokogawa PIMS integrates data from many systems in a plant and produce high value business information for use by decision makers at all levels of the enterprise. Yokogawa PIMS automatically integrates data from process control systems, including Distributed Control Systems (DCS) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), with other data from quality, maintenance, laboratory, planning, scheduling, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and many other systems. Yokogawa PIMS convert Plant Data into Business Information.

2. Exaquantum PIMS is in use in oil & gas, chemicals, food, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, power generation, semi-conductors and general manufacturing throughout the world, providing monitoring, management, optimization, modeling and control of many diverse, dynamic, and hazardous processes, often in the world's largest plants.

3. Issued for and on behalf Christian Beasley: Yokogawa Marex Ltd (GMSC), Marex House, 34 Medina Road, Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK, PO31 7DA. Tel: +44 (0)1983 296011. Fax: +44 (0)1983 291776 e-mail: Christian.Beasley@ymx.yokogawa.com

4. Yokogawa Marex is now known as Yokogawa GMSC, reflecting its new role as the Global MES Solutions Centre for Yokogawa.

5. Yokogawa Marex (GMSC) Website: www.yokogawa.com/iis

6. Issued for and on behalf of Yokogawa GMSC by John Ockenden, John Ockenden international public relations, Whindrum House, Methven, Perth PH1 3QU, United Kingdom. +44 (0)7710 391 054. e-mail: john@jockenden.freeserve.co.uk

7. Visa-OM’s importance in refinery operations has already been recognised in Australia through it being awarded the Pace Zenith Award in the Oil, Gas and Hydrocarbons category. The awards, which are presented annually, publicly recognise industrial applications that most successfully demonstrate technological excellence and innovation.

8. Photographs (both high resolution electronic and print) and system/network graphics are available to accompany this story. Please contact Christian Beasley.