Using Artificial Intelligence to Improve Plant Reliability, Efficiency, and Profitability
New AI technologies enhance your automation systems, expand your manufacturing capacity, and optimize your productivity. So why are so many plants struggling to gain traction with implementing these new technologies? Perhaps there are so many options on the table you find it difficult to sort th ...
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Where Have All the Batch Experts Gone?
Process control engineering is a specific expertise blending knowledge of industrial processes, electronics, software, and instrumentation. Batch process control engineering is an expertise within an expertise. Implementing batch process control requires all the skills and knowledge of tradition ...
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DCS Migrations - Is a One-for-One System More Costly to Install?
As experts in control systems integration, at Hargrove, we have successfully completed hundreds of upgrade and retrofit projects, and many of them involved migrations from one platform to another in a distributed control system (DCS). The design philosophy question that nearly always start ...
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Key Considerations for Remote Access in an Industrial Facility
Define | Select | Plan | Execute... Due to ongoing health and safety concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic, many industrial facilities have either implemented remote access systems or are considering doing so for the first time this year. While some companies had the resources and con ...
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3 Things You Must Get Right About Your Process Safety Program
If you are new to deciphering the requirements of Process Safety Management (PSM) from OSHA for instrumented safeguards, the documents can be quite daunting! While it is imperative to implement down to the last detail, it can be helpful to have a few high-level guideposts to frame your under ...
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What Is Your Commissioning + Startup IQ?
We have been at the blog for a few months now and I wanted to test you on some of the topics that we have been covering. Take this short quiz to see where your overall Commissioning and Startup knowledge is. I will compile all the replies and the next blog will give you the overall responses and ...
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What Does The Schedule Show?
Understanding Critical Path and Milestone schedules. If you have been around enough startups, you begin to see a sad trend. Often, commissioning and startup (CSU) activities are not included on the project critical path and milestone (CPM) schedule or they represent the entire CSU process as one ...
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That's A Little RACI If You Ask Me!
Defining Roles and Responsibilities. Most people in our industry are familiar with a RACI (Responsibility for Inspecting, Accountable for the Item Completion, Consulted with before the step, Informed when the step is complete) chart or some form of Roles and Responsibilities matrix ...
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Does This Process Make Me Look FAT??
Planning a better FAT. It is always surprising when I ask people about their plans for a Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) and they blankly look back at me. I have conducted and helped plan large FATs and there should always be a plan. Because of this, I wanted to take a minute to discuss w ...
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How Can Technology Help?
In today’s technology world, I wanted to talk about the five things that CII discusses as having the biggest impact on Commissioning and Startup (CSU) activities. Smart P&IDS – One of the big project success stories is in the planning of CSU activities using integrated systems. ...
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What the DMAIC?!
Working to improve our quality plan. Because of my job in engineering commissioning and startup (CSU), I work closely with a lot of different industries and see many ways of doing things. Often, I see a quality plan that relies mostly on hope, or that people are applying the wrong assurance plan ...
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How Consistent Are You?
Creating Efficiency through Consistency We’ve heard the phrase “consistency is key” since we were kids. In fact, I say it to my own children. It is true in life, and it is true in the world of Project Execution Planning and Startup and Commissioning (CSU). The word consistency m ...
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Wait, What Plan?
Get A Head Start on Startup and Commissioning Recently, I was meeting with a client about the detail design for a DCS migration, and I asked for the Project Execution Plan (PEP), which is typically established in the previous phase of the project. The client looked at me and asked why. I explaine ...
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Hurry Up and Send It!
Understanding the Need for Pre-Shipment Testing With today’s accelerated project schedules comes an ever-increasing need to get items to the site more quickly and in time to meet the scheduled startup date. In order to meet these deadlines, engineering groups push to release purchase orders ...
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Who Showed Up Today?
The Importance of Knowing Your Team. For several months, I had been serving as an automation provider on a project for a major oil company. The day to install finally arrived! While catching up with my long-time company representative, we went to finally meet with the design and construction mana ...
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