From window glass to detergents and foodstuffs and from dialysis to flue gas cleaning: Solvay products are to be found in many areas of our everyday life. For many of the products manufactured at the Rheinberg plant, such as soda, Solvay is one of the European or world leaders. In addition to Solvay‘s 400 employees, around 600 employees work in sister and partner companies in Rheinberg Industrial Park.
Until recently, the Design department had used a multitude of tools for electrical engineering design. However, their maintenance, the consistent data management and the „forwarding“ of data across system boundaries involved costs that were „simply not in keeping with the times“ according to Markus Terheiden, Project Engineer and Georg Lindbüchl, Group Manager of Energy Technology at Solvay.
Leading
© SOLVAY GmbHA modern, uniform system was sought for the documentation of the entire electrical wiring of plants, from 25 kV up to IT. It should master all types of presentation: from circuit diagrams and detailed wiring diagrams to assignment tables, from fibre optic cables to communication cables. Upon comparison, Engineering Base (EB) from AUCOTEC proved to be a leader according to Lindbüchl. During this process, Solvay attached particular importance to viewing and redlining, convenient data administration, and an Excel interface that is easy to use.
„Live“ data
„As an operator, we handle ‚live‘ data on a daily basis, and we have to change, improve and develop diagrams. Thus the new system had to be able to adopt legacy data in a consistent manner,“ reported the Group Manager. With EB‘s migration solution, which configures, maps and imports the data, all object information was combined from different systems. In EB‘s central database, these objects form a comprehensive plant model with all logic links, which can be simultaneously edited by the participants.
Approval facilitated
„Our electrical engineering information is now integrated into EB. The areas are better networked, and data management is easier. This is a clear plus for quality and time,“ said the Project Engineer Terheiden. According to him, it is also a plus for approval procedures. External data management enables the authorities to have access. Since it is fed by EB, there is a reliance on the up-to-dateness of the data. The usual additional data entries are no longer necessary.
Synergy
At Solvay, the system is now to be developed even further. Thus consideration is being given to covering the process area with EB in order to exploit further synergy effects of this special platform.
