Process optimization in oredr to reduce:

• time wasting

• risk of errors

At the beginning of 2011 The Sesto San Giovanni ABB division, pushed by the competitive attitude of the market in recent years, identified the necessity to adopt an advanced instrument for the layout of process diagrams, so far developed through standard instrument such as AutoCAD.

“The main drawback of this approach” Gabriele Patrì P&ID’s Manager of ABB explains “was represented not so much by the lack of dedicated graphic instruments, but rather by the impossibility to check on the congruity of the components on the diagram with the piping classes and by the necessity to provide the lines, valves and equipment lists in the manual mode”.

After a careful and in-depth analysis of the various products available on the market, ABB chose ESApro for its comprehensive functions, its simplicity of use, and the possibility of providing standard DWG documents. In addition, the provider is capable of developing functions responding to specific requirements, has an excellent after-sales service and last but not least, is available at a very tempting price. The choice of this product has been based also on reliability and expertise in the industrial sector demonstrated by ESAin.

Used modules:

• P&ID for the development of process schemes

• Instrumentation for the Datasheet and Hook-up Management

• MTO for obtaining from P&ID, not only the usual line, valve and equipment lists, but also the estimates of the detail piping materials

February 2012: the introduction of ESApro into ABB and the organization of training courses. A two-days course and a short period of training on the job were sufficient to enable the users to operate the program proficiently.

April 2012: ABB acquires an important order, valued at 60 million US dollars, commissioned by Shell Gas Iraq B.V., for the construction of the Khor Al Zubair Power Generation Plant in South Iraq. Here was the first chance for giving ESApro a field test.

ESAin constant support on-site contributed to minimize delays, to improve time management and minimize downtimes so as to finish the project in well within the deadlines.

“The ESAin technical after-sales service” Patrì confirms “has always lived up to expectations. We have particularly appreciated the timeliness of the service: each time we asked for hot-line assistance, we always and immediately found an expert technician ready to provide completely thorough solutions to our problems.”.

Thanks to P&ID design graphic instruments the timing for the project draft have been reduced of an approximate 25% in comparison to the past. But the main benefit was to automatically get hold of the material lists. Such an advantage was even more evident when revising the project, when the material lists had to be updated: in this phase a the revision comparison function was particularly useful.

“We estimated” Patrì concludes “that with the reduction of the project development times, the substantial annulment of the error rate and the integration with the other departments (instrumentation and piping), the time element will be cut down by about 40% therefore allowing us to provide the materials available at a much earlier stage”..

For the next project ABB is looking forward to implementing the additional modules ESApro Datasheet and ESApro MTO for the instrumentation datasheet management and the estimate computation of the piping materials, with all components such as flanges, fittings, nuts and bolts, gaskets etc. included.