If you’re working in a capital-intensive business, you can buy just about anything you need to keep your operation humming along. Need a new pump, motor, wheel, belt or bolt? If you’re willing to pay the price, it’s yours.

But how do you decide exactly what it is you need to upgrade, replace or change in your particular facility? How do you know you’re making the right choices when there’s significant money on the line? Can you actually buy confidence in your decision-making?

The answer today is, yes! Advances in analysis and modeling can actually provide a complete, accurate system-level assessment of your current risks and underlying costs (OPEX and CAPEX) — giving you everything you need to act with confidence. Essentially, we can now predict the future performance of any complex system and figure out just what you need to do to keep it running at the highest levels.

We now know what the future looks like, and why. Many of us over the years have found that really knowing the best solution to a problem is always difficult. With buffering, alternate flowpaths, sprint capacity, dynamic feed and demand, spare parts availability, supply chain issues, etc., it’s nearly impossible to calculate the impact of one change to a system — because all of the systems in your operation are highly interrelated, and one modification can start a chain reaction of events.

That’s exactly why solutions like Aspen Fidelis Reliability™ look at the entire operation holistically and provide a “confidence value” as to your chances of meeting your selected goals. Think about what this means to engineering and construction firms, for example.

They’re contracted to build a facility to provide a certain performance target, and they’re expected to build it as cheaply, safely and reliably as possible. These new data-driven solutions enable E&C firms to show their customers the exact percentage of confidence they have that they’ll meet the performance goals set for the project. And these solutions can be set up to track whatever metrics are most important, whether it’s revenue, profit, production, amount of on-spec product, flaring events or on-time performance.

All of that adds up to the ability to more accurately scope projects and complete them on time and under budget. If an E&C firm can shave 2-3 percent off the cost of a project, that’s quite literally money in the bank. A lot of it.

Here’s a quick look at what you can do with a solution like Aspen Fidelis Reliability:

• Predict System Performance. Using a Monte Carlo simulation to model the system and its process flows, you can identify and quantify all the losses in your system and then justify any proposed solutions.

• Model System Lifecycle Availability. By looking at the performance of the system over the complete lifecycle, you can optimize the system throughout all of the dynamic changes that occur over the life of your plant.

• Determine the Financial Impact of Changes. By modeling the flow of feeds, products, utilities and revenues throughout the system, you can accurately calculate the financial impact of any changes to your operation, maintenance or design.

And the great thing is this technology can be applied to a new project or existing equipment to provide faster and more accurate decision-making.

If your operation is starting to show signs that it’s not keeping pace, open up the hood and get a good look at what’s going on underneath! With technology that gives you an up-close look at the entire system and models the effects of changing conditions throughout, you can decide what adjustments to make with complete confidence and maximize your return on investment.

 

To learn more about how solutions like Aspen Fidelis Reliability are enabling E&C firms to win more business and sustain long-term relationships with their customers, sign up for our upcoming webinar.