Data management comes of age

For decades, chemical engineers have dreamed of how computers could help them create better, faster and cheaper processes. We have flowsheet simulators and equipment design programmes, but there has still been a lack of software to manage process design information across an entire project. Now the situation is changing - driven by savings of 30 per cent or more in the cost and time needed to create a design using the latest software.

In an ideal design office, each data item would be entered only once, and nobody would work with out-of-date information, explains Jim Madden of process engineering software company AspenTech. `Intelligent' flowsheets would change automatically to reflect new data, and technology suppliers, operating companies and contractors would be able to share data without having to exchange tonnes of paperwork.

The scale of this data management system is formidable, even for software designers equipped with the latest programming techniques. Madden is one of the brains behind AspenZyqad, and engineer-friendly computing environment for managing design data. `We are the only ones so far to have cracked the problem of managing process engineering data,' he claims.

Now on version 10.1, AspenZyqad has an estimated 3000 users in over two dozen companies including ABB Lummus Global, Akzo Nobel, Bechtel, British Nuclear Fuels, DSM, Fluor Daniel, Foster Wheeler, Jacobs Engineering, Technip Italia and Unilever. `Zyqad is now a routine part of the suite of software we use for smart front-end engineering,' says Dave North, manager of process services for Foster Wheeler.

`We estimate that Zyqad can cut the time taken to produce an individual drawing and its underpinning datasheets by 40 per cent, and save 25 per cent of the man-hours for the complete process package,' says Maged Selim of BNFL Engineering, which has supported Zyqad since its debut as an independent product in the late 1980s.

Intelligent interfaces

At the core of AspenZyqad is the object-oriented database which stores the design information. The database drives two interfaces: one graphical, for PFDs and other drawings, the other text-based, for datasheets. `This is not a glorified drafting system,' says Madden. `The drawings and datasheets change to reflect changes in the database, and the database reflects changes in the documents.'

The database structure, drawing symbols and datasheet layout can all be customised to suit users' needs, as can the access control system which allows only authorised users to create or change data.

Access and openness

Aspen Zyqad acts as a `workbench' for process engineers, integrating or interfacing with simulators - including those from AspenTech's competitors - as well as equipment design programmes and users' own in-house software and spreadsheets.

Aspen Zyqad can import and export data as Excel spreadsheets, through Windows cut and paste, or by using Microsoft's OLE and COBRA technologies. Potentially the most important exchange route, however, is the pdXi/STEP A231 data model from the STEP consortium and the AIChE's Process Data Exchange Institute. AspenTech claims that Aspen Zyqad 4.1, released in September 1998, was the first commercial STEP-compliant process design programme.

`Zyqad's openness is a key benefit to us,' says North. `We work with many different clients, technology providers and subcontractors, each with their own data formats and preferred simulators. Foster Wheeler is committed to open standards for data exchange, and in this respect Zyqad is ideal.

`For an engineering contractor like ourselves, Zyqad's main benefit is its ability to combine information from different sources and to provide a certified source of data for detailed equipment calculations,' says Aurelia Rosati, a Zyqad expert with Technip Italy in Rome. The intensive use of interfaces, at the moment through ASCII files, is the key to saving time and providing a unified and certified source of data.

Alliances with engineering

Computer-aided engineering (CAE) systems such as Intergraph's PDS also use databases to store design information throughout the lifetime of a plant. A single database could store both process and engineering information, but for the moment, says Andy McBrien of AspenTech, the original software architect of Zyqad, the best approach is to maintain linked but separate systems with Zyqad looking after the process data and the CAE system minding the physical layout.

Traditionally, the engineering department starts each piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) as a clean sheet, says McBrien, and much of their content is transcribed by hand. Together with the requirements of concurrent engineering, where information has to flow from engineering back to process and vice-versa, this means many opportunities for error.

Accordingly, AspenZyqad and Intergraph have formed an alliance to promote the exchange of data between AspenZyqad and SmartPlant, Intergraphs's next generation of CAE software.

A P&ID in Zyqad can now exchange data automatically with a SmartPlant P&ID or the P&ID module of Intergraph's PDS 6.4. This saves time and effort by eliminating the need to transcribe data, but the most important gain is in the consistency of information and design quality assurance, says McBrien.

Counting the gains

Consumer giant Unilever is a long-time supporter of Zyqad. `Many of our products are quite small - around the £15million mark - but they have timescales of typically three months, and that means concurrent engineering,' says manager of integrated design Vernon Hockley. `We use Zyqad to handle complete projects, including P&IDs.'

The challenge for Unilever, says Hockley, is to reuse designs while modifying them quickly to suit product changes or local requirements at the plant site. `We need "Lego block" design, yet no two plants are exactly alike, especially in their layout. That's where Zyqad helps.'

Another contractor, Akzo Nobel Engineering, decided to license the programme at the end of last year. In January, IT consultant Dave Kerkhove started work on customising datasheets, and the new system was rolled out in mid-July.

`In May and June we demonstrated Zyqad to the process and detailed design engineers,' says Kerkhove. `All in all, it's a big improvement on the outdated tools we had before.' PE