Assessment Management meets the future. . .
You may be the Plant Manager for a major gulf coast refinery. You are responsible for safe, efficient, and environmentally sound operation of all refinery process units and production in accordance with all company, federal, state, and local regulations. In your role, you must provide leadership and direction to all plant personnel, make sure resources are allocated wisely, and maintenance performed proactively to ensure that operations and customer satisfaction are smoothly executed.
Or, maybe you are the Operations Manager for a utility company, providing mission critical infrastructure services. You must constantly deliver the highest level of service and safety to your customers and the general public.
In either case, information about your operation is key to the safe and timely delivery of products or services to your customers. This information comes together from a variety of sources and forms, and is fed back to real-time business intelligence systems. The sources include legacy systems, data silos, and real-time automated systems. The culmination of the data and statistics helps form decisions that impact the level of service and product provided, and ultimately, the financial profitability. The need for information pertains not only to you, but extends down through the organization to shop foreman or service technicians.
With increased information collection and compilation being supported in the cloud, making critical data available anywhere at any time, we run the risk of becoming awash with data! How does one not drown in this information deluge? To remain competitive, this comprehensive knowledge about products and systems is essential for gaining and keeping an edge over the competition. But, do you have a real-time framework to turn that data into action, and do you have the programs that can provide a concise picture that ties different aspects together?
With the proliferation of technology, change is inevitable. We need a way of viewing the big picture when applying old methods to new technology. For plant and facility asset management, rapid capture of the current conditions using scan data, and integrating with real-time and legacy information can be the key. There are many working feverishly to develop 3D models and link them to data in project review tools. But, the moment the data is modeled, it is also out of date, due to changes that might occur in the field.
We are suggesting a different way of looking at the big picture challenge that does not require modeling, tagging, or labeling every speck of information before it can be used. It begins with the secure movement of asset documentation and management systems components, to the cloud to be accessible to both field and office. We are not quite suggesting Google Glass CCTVs strapped to the technicians faces, but interfaces, such as the NVIDIA SHIELD tablet with Tegra K1 192 core Kepler GPU that become commonplace through the proliferation of iOS and Android operating systems.
We have left the desktop and are moving past laptops to tablets, surfaces and iPads. With devices like the SHIELD tablet, which boasts having the world’s fastest mobile processor, (NVIDIA Tegra K1 mobile processor), we can dare to be mobile. With gaming driven innovation, we have PC-class technologies like DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.4, and high-performance rendering on mobile devices.
Why do we care about super-fast tablets with multi-core GPUs that share architecture with PCs and supercomputers? Because of our big picture challenge and real-time information needs. The cloud promises secure access to information anywhere from the board room or the shop floor. The superfast wireless tablet becomes the medium for delivery, and the picture is the real-time rendered view of the plant or the factory.
Once the domain of flight simulators and games, real-time rendering of digitally captured scenes is becoming viable, and may help navigate the forest of choices when linked with current and legacy information streams. When I speak of digitally captured scenes, I am talking of laser scan data from systems like the Z+F 5010c with HD color, or the Faro Focus 3D x130 that has an integrated color camera for creating photorealistic scenes. Now, imagine stepping seamlessly through the scene, clicking on equipment and seeing information about the maintenance history and performance.
AVEVA first showed linking point clouds through AVEVA NET IntelliLaser and E3D with hot-spotting of 3D laser scan data that adds asset-tag intelligence. The upcoming release of LFM NetView 4.0 will introduce unique 3D mark-up functionality, tablet enablement and offline modes allowing for onsite work and downstream collaboration. LFM visualization Project FID1709216 shows what will follow, real-time visualization of asset life cycle information. Suddenly the thought of flying through the shop floor and reviewing equipment productivity data is not so far-fetched.
These latest innovations provide highly intuitive 3D real-world experiences, to explore the facility asset information, and unlock the power to make more informed decisions.