Real-time survival

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Like every other company in its industry, chemical giant Atofina needs to wring every last dollar and whiff of inefficiency out of its operations. A few years ago, the $19.3 billion company, previously known as Elf Atochem, began to implement a system that collected data from its manufacturing plants for analysis by plant-floor personnel.

Today, that system has evolved into a real-time performance management  (RTPM) platform that lets business managers view valve pressures, temperatures, flows and other data generated from the petrochemical-manufacture process.

By broadening access to this data beyond the plant floor, decision-makers can quickly spot inefficiencies and fix them. Such enhancements are critical in the challenged chemical industry, which was struggling even before the recession hit.

"You can learn a whole lot by analyzing data, especially when you're looking for ways to make improvements, says Dwight Stoffel, principal plant electrical instrumentation engineer for Atofina's plant in Calvert City, Ky. Stoffel was one of the first people at Atofina to see the potential to propagate real-time performance data throughout the company.

RTPM systems collect timely data from equipment and different parts of a facility and bring it together in one database. "[RTPM] systems collect, aggregate and put context around the data to enable better decision-making," says Leif Eriksen, principal at consulting firm Industry Insights.

Atofina began its RTPM odyssey in 1997 by installing the Plant Intelligence application from OSI Software  at its Calvert City plant. This initial investment cost $100,000 for hardware, software and installation. The experiment proved fruitful. In 2001, the first full year that the plant used real-time Plant Intelligence data, "we cut our maintenance costs just for parts by $363,000," Stoffel says.

By last year, Stoffel estimated Plant Intelligence garnered about $1.8 million in one-time savings, mainly by having the information necessary to make better decisions. And the savings continue. "I'm saving over $100,000 per year just from automating the reports," he says, noting this was not possible before.

At the Calvert City plant, Plant Intelligence collects data from 17,500 points on the industrial network and forwards that data through a firewall to the WAN . Since the initial implementation, Atofina has purchased 80 Plant Intelligence servers and is rolling them out at hundreds of plants worldwide. Thanks to the system, company managers can analyze the data and figure out ways to improve processes and reduce costs.

For example, with safety and environmental issues being paramount, Atofina managers now pore over the data to identify areas where safety problems might crop up, to take action before any breakdowns occur. Plant Intelligence also lets Atofina's plants share best practices.