Introduction
For the twentieth time, representatives from German-speaking companies met in Potsdam at TAR2024 (Turnarounds, Anlagenstillstände, Revisionen), discussing the challenges and solutions around STO in asset-intensive industries.
Plant shutdowns are an immense challenge due to their financial significance and complexity in terms of deadline and cost pressure, scarce resources, quality as well as new safety and environmental regulations. Processes must be thought of end-to-end in order to leverage optimization potential. Digital technologies, when used correctly, can be game changers here, but they place new demands on the organization and its processes. And while SAP might not always be front and center of the discussion, turnarounds will fail without proper EAM software support.
The conference started with a half-day workshop on contractor management before diving deep into management and functional topics throughout the two-day plenum.
Presentation Highlights
Philipp Rapp and Lucas Bach from BASF shared insights on turnarounds at the Ludwigshafen facilities. Freezing the scope and ensuring that long-term relationships with contractors guarantee resource availability seem to be some of the main challenges. Proper support for the organization and the respective processes by converging asset 3D asset models and smart P&IDs with planning software marked another topic to be addressed.
Frank Stargardt from PCK Refinery at Schwedt demonstrated their way of dealing with warehousing and materials even after being issued from an SAP-maintained storage location, while Matthias Huster from LEAG discussed the effects of volatile energy pricing on the planning and scheduling of shutdowns.
Very interesting external insights came from the aerospace industry and the German Federal Armed Forces. Manfred Müller, former aircraft captain and head of flight safety research at Deutsche Lufthansa AG, talked about acceptable risk levels and how stress in complex situations influences the outcome. Technical causes in this context always have to be analyzed together with operational, human, and social aspects. Major Christian Hofmann, a company commander with the German Army, elaborated on the human factor as part of the military command process dealing with the stages of Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act, putting an emphasis on mutual support for solving problems jointly.
There were lots of other interesting presentations by companies like Bayer, Bilfinger, BP, Evonik, Henkel, PCK, TotalEnergies, and many more. One other highlight was about the implications of conducting a different kind of “shutdown” when demolishing the cooling towers of RWE Nuclear’s site in Biblis.
Overall, a lot of integrative aspects of STO with services and spare parts provisioning, contractor management, warehousing, as well as budget and cost planning were illustrated, making it very clear that information collaboration and respective IT platforms are key to success.
Evening Event
TAC Insights as the conference producer invited to the unique Biosphere Potsdam for celebrating 20 years of TAR with the community. Conference attendees could immerse themselves in the exotic ambiance, delve deeper into the exciting topics of the day, and make valuable contacts with an impressive view of the tropical garden.
New industry cloud application Wipro STO360
Throughout the past few years, SAP and Wipro jointly embarked on a mission to provide customers in asset-intensive industries with enhanced support for managing STO. A global market study was conducted and revealed the following challenges when planning and executing a shutdown:
- Lack of process standardization
- Processes spread across several siloed applications leading to information loss and the inability to track STO tasks
- Lack of real-time integration across the various applications
- Lack of real-time visibility into the state of STO operations leads to inefficient and ineffective decision-making, high risk, and overruns
- Lack of a platform for collaboration leads to communication break-down and operational inefficiencies
- Recalibration and adjustments of STO plans are complicated and inflexible
- Applications are complex and not intuitive leading to limited adoption
Wipro’s new STO solution, realized together with SAP and a large Oil&Gas customer, is completely developed on SAP’s BTP platform, fully integrated with the Digital Core, and provides functionality for critical aspects of turnarounds.
The application was demonstrated at TAR2024 and was well received by the audience. The intention is to introduce it to the market this year via SAP's partner ecosystem offering.
Further information is available via the author or at https://www.wipro.com/oil-and-gas/shutdown-turnaround-outage-management/.
The complete agenda of the event can be viewed at https://tacinsights.eventsair.com/tar-2024/, with presentations available through TAC Insights.
About the author:
Dr.-Ing. Achim Krüger started his career as an officer with the German Air Force. He held several positions in the areas of maintenance of helicopters and transport aircraft as well as systems engineering, before he worked in higher commands as a logistics general staff officer. Achim also spent 16 years with SAP, holding various positions in consulting, development, and solution management. He finally was responsible as a Vice President for SAP's solutions for the line of business Asset Management. Today, Achim runs Rizing's EMEA business in the area of Enterprise Asset Management. Rizing, a Wipro company, is a global consulting firm, focusing on SAP EAM as well as HCM and Consumer Industries.
achim.krueger@rizing.com
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