For two full days in October, close to 700 people from more than 460 leading Chinese companies filled the Beijing International Convention Center (BICC) for OPTIMIZE™ China, exploring paths to digitally transform the engineering, operation and maintenance of their critical equipment, plants and production systems.

AspenTech President and CEO Antonio Pietri and Sinopec Director of Information System Management Li Defang keynoted the event, which focused on “enabling the smart factory through practical digital transformation.” Each mapped out how leading companies are building smart plants and achieving operational excellence through well-defined, long-term asset optimization strategies.

The timing for implementing these strategies could not be more critical, as China’s economic growth, although slowing, is still projected to remain at more than 5 percent per year through 2030. With this growth, demand for energy, fuels and chemicals will increase as well. Meeting increased demands will require leading Chinese companies to produce more efficiently and be more responsive to market dynamics without allowing degradation of quality or lapses in safety.

OPTIMIZE China provided a valuable forum for attendees to discuss practical strategies and proven tactics for achieving operational excellence through a holistic asset optimization strategy. The event kicked off with Antonio Pietri outlining the characteristics of the world’s best performers, regardless of industry, and their paths to operational excellence — with a particular focus on performance engineering, optimum operations and maximum reliability.

Sinopec’s Li Defang, widely recognized for his expertise in digital transformation and operational excellence, defined what smart manufacturing looks like today and will look like in the future in China. He highlighted the impressive progress Sinopec is making in its own digital transformation. 

More than 50 AspenTech customers and experts from around the world presented case studies that showcased best practices for the deployment and application of leading technologies, including digital process optimization, advanced process control, prescriptive analytics and modeling for improved design, operations and planning. These expert-led discussions delved into how companies are achieving new levels of decision-making insight through:

• The convergence of real-time data made available via sensors, new IIoT capabilities and edge computing

• Advanced analytics fueled by reliable, proven machine learning and autonomous agents

• The decades of process knowledge experience that are “baked into” trusted asset optimization software

As this new executive brief describes, smart companies that find the way to successfully transform digitally and pursue operational excellence via asset optimization will be market leaders. There are some basic steps that companies can take in order to succeed in their digital acceleration — including partnering with a technology provider that knows the workflows, the business and the industry.

AspenTech has a proud history of partnering with customers in China, dating back to 1983 when we started working with our first two customers in the country: the Beijing Design Institute (now part of Sinopec Engineering, Inc.) and the Beijing Institute for Chemical Technology. Today, we have hundreds of customers in China, and we were honored to host many of them last month at OPTIMIZE China.

 

If you were not able to attend OPTIMIZE China, consider joining us at our biennial global user conference — OPTIMIZE 2019 — in Houston in May. Hope to see you there!