OXEA, headquartered in Monheim, is a global leader in the production of OXO products. These are needed, for example, for the manufacture of coatings, pharmaceuticals, lubricants, flavorings, paints, and plastics. In addition to its main plant in Oberhausen, the company operates production sites in Marl and Nanjing as well as two locations in the United States, employing around 1,200 people in total.
From 2013 to 2025, the company was part of OQ, an integrated energy company with roots in Oman. In 2020, OXEA was renamed OQ Chemicals.
Since 2025, the company has been part of the portfolio of Strategic Value Partners (SVP) and Blantyre and is once again operating under the name OXEA.
Systematically consistent from simulation to maintenance
In order to ensure the consistency of plant and digital image, OXEA has decided to develop and operate its plants with AUCOTEC's cooperative Engineering Base platform from the first sketch to predictive maintenance. Engineering Base thus forms the basis of the digital twins over the entire life cycle of the plants. What was decisive for OXEA was that Engineering Base consistently brings together the diverse workflows, documents, data and changes of the various disciplines and suppliers. Engineering Base's bandwidth, from basic engineering including simulation support, detail engineering and operation & maintenance, reduces the diversity of tools at OXEA and thus duplicate work, manual data transfer and multiple storage.
"Our planners, the simulation specialists, prefabrication, assembly and ongoing operation will all have access to Engineering Base's digital plant twin in the future. Hard to maintain paper documentation is eliminated, as is the comparison of redundant data pots of different tools," Dr Oliver Bülters, Vice President Site Services Oberhausen, explains a core of the versatile, always up-to-date, globally accessible plant model. In addition, the individual development steps of a plant, including testing and approval processes, can be easily traced.
Forward-looking digital
Engineering Base's integrative optimization of interdisciplinary workflows, its future-proof cloud technology and ease of use have convinced OXEA just as much as Engineering Base's understanding of standards such as Dexpi or NE 150: "For us, the keys to digitization are primarily the digital twin, plant modelling, predictive maintenance and fully integrated, networked systems and processes. Engineering Base will give solid support in all these matters," says Bülters. He also expects significantly reduced engineering and operating costs due to process and design optimization. AUCOTEC also presented the most convincing concept for data migration.
Open and flexible for expansion
Since Engineering Base proved to be very customizable and open to the system landscape of OXEA during the evaluation, including the integration of SAP data, Oliver Bülters says the platform is of interest for the entire group.