Do you also enjoy a broad panoramic view—from an Alpine peak or a cruise ship? And what about the mountains of documents and floods of data encountered in day-to-day plant engineering? AUCOTEC offers the perfect “viewing platform” for precisely this scenario. With Asset 360, engineering specialists automatically gain an overview of all their devices, subsystems, and other assets.

A Basis for Decision-Making

This includes all accessories, connections, flow media, values, operating modes, and substructures. With a single click, AUCOTEC's Engineering Base (EB) collaboration platform automatically inserts all information into the required datasheets. Without EB, laborious manual data transfer from multiple discipline-specific tools and other data sources is generally the norm. Yet datasheets are indispensable as one of the most important means of communication among EPCs, their subcontractors, and customers.

They document, for example, calculation results related to the load conditions of a process engineering reactor and serve as the basis for decisions on its final design, ordering, and production, as well as for informing suppliers and obtaining approvals. Despite the two basic standards—API for process engineering datasheets and ISA for the instrumentation sector—there is still an enormous variety of layouts.

Who Has the Time?

EPCs with global customers and suppliers, in particular, must be able to account for every conceivable unit, language, and design specification in their datasheets. One customer expects the equipment table in the center, another at the left margin; one wants it in Russian, while the next customer wants U.S. units of measurement. This applies both to datasheets documenting “only” one device, including all links and attributes, and to different simulation scenarios or operating conditions for specific assets or entire plant areas. This can easily amount to 100 sheets with multiple tables and charts. Who has time to enter all this data? Who has the system knowledge required for the individual specialized tools? Who can verify the data? The effort involved and the potential for error are enormous.

Many Templates, One Source

EB addresses these challenges with Asset 360. These Excel-based datasheets create a comprehensive view of assets such as devices and subsystems. Because EB works on an object-oriented basis, combining data from all core engineering disciplines and external systems such as simulation tools in its central data model, and mapping all links and logic to and between objects, Asset 360 can easily “extract” the required information from this single source of truth. The datasheet is therefore simply another representation of the object and its accessories. This approach would be impossible when working with a chain of separate discipline-specific tools.

In addition, Asset 360 offers highly flexible configuration options for its datasheets. An EPC can therefore create a wide variety of templates to meet customer requirements. The format of each sheet can also be based on the required standards, such as the relevant API standards for process engineering or the ISA standards used by instrumentation engineers. The language can be selected and changed at any time with a simple click. This produces a high-performance, “living” Excel spreadsheet populated with EB data that always knows exactly where specific data belong, regardless of how the layout is configured. The datasheets also support revisions, making it easy to identify what has changed when customers or suppliers return the spreadsheets to the engineering team.

The Future Included

Editing Asset 360 spreadsheets is closely based on Excel. There are good reasons for this: almost everyone is familiar with Excel and can therefore work with Asset 360 spreadsheets easily after only a short time.

However, today's Asset 360 is only the starting point on a path toward much more. The aim is to allow engineers to make changes in the datasheet that are reflected directly in the EB model. This will turn Asset 360 into both a user interface and the definitive “intermediary” among EPCs, suppliers, and operators. Reports 360 is planned to provide comprehensive, automatically generated object lists for a system or subsystem, as well as a link to EB Mobile View. It will also be possible to send datasheets to third parties whose corrections can be easily traced through change management and history tracking, even if they do not have EB. As a result, many more project participants will be able to benefit from the newly generated overview of the entire project landscape.