Process automation: Siemens wins contract to support plant modernization
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/14/2008 1:40:00 PM
Siemens Energy & Automation has been awarded a project valued at more than $1 million to modernize the automation system at the Bayer CropScience site in Institute, West Va., with Siemens SIMATIC
PCS 7 distributed control system (DCS).
Bayer CropScience is one of the world's leading innovative crop science companies in the areas of crop protection, non-agriculture pest control, seeds, and plant biotechnology. The migration to the PCS 7 DCS will enable Bayer CropScience to meet challenging scheduling requirements while modernizing two manufacturing processes at the Institute site.
"The timing of this project is critical to avoid disrupting production," said Vinay Devgon, head of engineering at the Bayer CropScience Institute site. "The ability to use a single integrated platform for DCS, batch, safety, and process simulation technology is the main reason we were able to meet our tight deadline. In addition, now we can do a rigorous S88 implementation and documentation of the batch process."
Kevin McDevitt, Siemens Project Management Office manager, says in addition to competitive pricing, Siemens was awarded the project based on the overall long-term value presented to Bayer CropScience.
"Siemens can deliver attractive lifecycle costs minimizing total cost of ownership because process automation modernization is a core competence of our team in the U.S.," says McDevitt, who is overseeing the project execution. "We provide this value by data mining the intellectual property of the installed system so that we can preserve the existing process know-how and extend it within PCS 7 by using the system's powerful engineering tools."
Devgon says another way Siemens adds value to the conversion project is by partnering with local systems integrator and full service engineering company Augusta Engineering. He says Siemens technology and global support combined with Augusta Engineering's local support was a significant reason for winning the project.
Scott Cloherty, Augusta Engineering's information and control systems manager, agrees a strong selling point was local, ongoing support. "With all of us working together, Bayer CropScience is getting an integrated and comprehensive automation system that is locally supported. We are available when they need us."
