Oil & Gas Innovation Summer 2020 Digital | Page 46

PROCESSING
Investment Protection and a Basis for
Innovative Applications
For 30 years, the BASF Group has been using the I&C-CAE system ProDOK by Rösberg for the planning
and operational support of its production plants. User acceptance in day-to-day work is high, but there
is also a new demand for the inclusion of innovative applications. For this reason BASF decided to
switch to the new system generation ProDOK NG. This involved a Europe-wide migration of the I&C
data of about 300 plants with approximately 1.3 million loops at locations as far apart as Antwerp,
Basel, Ludwigshafen, Schwarzheide and Tarragona. Without disturbing day-to-day operating processes,
within two years the historically-grown, partly heterogeneous data formats were brought up to a unified
international standard (eCl@ss Advanced) so as to enable analysis and the use of applications on both a
plant-wide and a cross-locational basis.
“Spring Clean” for documentation
During the switchover it was also planned
to check up on the existing data. Where had
unnecessary data and documents accumulated?
Where were the data inconsistent? Where were
there reports, forms and documents with almost
identical content but differently formulated?
Where were links that were now inaccurate or
irrelevant? In a consulting process the experts
from Rösberg gave BASF intensive support in
answering these decisive questions. Thus not
only did they deliver their I&C-CAE system
ProDOK NG – they also supported the migration
process throughout, from beginning to end.
Here it proved a big advantage that Rösberg’s
employees are continually planning and
supporting new plants and the modernization
of existing plants. They understand the planning
processes represented by the software and
are familiar from their own experience with
the typical challenges. Before transferring
database contents they were first checked for
data consistency and integrity by adapted
ProDOK standard tools, without changing the
engineering technology. Any discrepancies
were then removed semi-automatically before
migration. Even without migration, this would
have been a useful step in itself.
Standardization and future security
The migration involved all the big BASF
locations in Europe. Over the years various
different data formats were used there. In
some cases, several different documentation
standards were even in use at the same location.
The migration was taken as an opportunity to
consolidate the individual master data records
throughout Europe and reduce the number
of I&C device specification forms used from
around 250 originally to about 60. The unified
basis for these device specifications is now
eCl@ss Advanced. This standard, which is
cross-sectoral and compliant with ISO and
The I&C-CAE system supports the planning and documentation of large process plants.
Copyright: Rösberg).
At the BASF location of Ludwigshafen alone, around 200 plants were migrated from ProDOK
to ProDOK NG (Copyright: BASF).
IEC standards, is ideally suited to describe
process data and is unrivaled at present –
at least in Europe. Ralph Rösberg (Fig. 5),
Managing Partner of Rösberg Engineering
GmbH, explains: “To my knowledge ProDOK
NG is the only I&C-CAE system now on
the market that comprehensively supports
this future-oriented standard for the process
industry. Yet in our view significant parts
of Industry 4.0 can only be realized if the
devices used in plants can also be consistently
described in a standardized way. Thus eCl@ss
Advanced will be indispensable to enterprises
in the medium term if they want to build
and operate plants that are future-proof.”
The Europe-wide reduction of the master
data together with the unified use of eCl@ss
Advanced provides more clarity and facilitates
location-wide and cross-location comparisons
and analyses for I&C planners, plant operators
and production workers.
Of course, the accesses by many different
users in the individual plants at the various
locations require basic regulations regarding
data and information protection to be
observed. For this purpose the BASF Group
operates a central administration system for
accesses to all its IT systems. Both the I&C-
CAE system ProDOK NG and the as-built
documentation system LiveDOK NG are
connected to this central system.