LyondellBasell—an $18 billion chemical company based in the
Netherlands—was having difficulty managing raw materials in plants
across the globe.
The company was facing rising prices in raw materials as well as increased costs in energy to produce its petrochemical products. The business executives needed accurate data from multiple plants in order to make effective decisions on buying and shipping the raw materials—or feedstock—to the right plant at the right time.

“We need accurate and timely feedback loops and operational models for dozens or hundreds of people working in diverse locations,” says Eric Silva, vice president of information technology at LyondellBasell. “Employees have used tools to address these challenges, but these tools did not work as harmoniously as they should.”

The company decided to integrate plant data with its enterprise systems. The project team started with the company’s North American olefins business unit, consisting of seven plants that produce a handful of petrochemicals used in packaging, detergents, clothing, car tires and coatings. The project team worked with Aspen Technology Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based manufacturing software supplier, using Aspen One modules to take plant data and integrate it into several applications from Microsoft Corp., the Redmond, Wash., software company.

The process for each of the plants involved taking data from Aspen One in the control room, integrating it through Microsoft BizTalk and making the data available at the front end through the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. The result offered cohesive plant data to help the business side with:

• Effective planning, selection and allocation of feedstock
• Translation of feedstock information into an operational plan that can be acted upon by the plant
• Online control of execution through real-time advanced control
• A rapid feedback loop based on a sophisticated modeling of the complex interactions among orders, production, inventory and distribution in the supply chain.

The task of getting critical plant data to the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is still complicated, but interfaces and standards are making the process easier and more dependable. It’s always been done, but in the past, plant personnel grabbed the data manually. Automation has made the information more timely and accurate, but the flood of plant data can overwhelm the ERP system. Plant managers are struggling to put the data into context so the enterprise system can absorb it in a meaningful manner. This is no small undertaking. Plants produce data in real-time streams, while ERP systems like batched data.

Integration drivers

There are a number of reasons for sharing plant data with ERP systems. The overriding objective is to trim costs and make plants more efficient. This includes coordinating multiple plants to make sure the right products are produced in the right place to meet demand. Lean operation comes as a result. Data from the plant also helps companies make sure they have the right materials at the right plant. Another reason for sharing data is to meet regulatory demands, whether that’s trimming the carbon footprint or managing data for compliance. Quality is also a motive. Plant data can be used to analyze production to avoid waste.

There is nothing new about taking plant data and preparing it for the business side of the company. In the past, however, it was done slowly and inefficiently. “Moving plant data has always been done, but in the past it was done with clipboards and sneakers,” says Fred Yentz, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of ILS Technology LLC, a connectivity software supplier based in Boca Raton, Fla. “Now it’s being done in a variety of maturing ways.” Those maturing ways include electronic data exchange that delivers real-time information on production and inventory.

While companies are working to integrate the typical production data the business people need from the plant, their job is complicated by the demand for new data on everything from regulatory data to environmental information. “Plants may be challenged by a new CEO who wants carbon data to come through IT (information technology) to the enterprise system,” says Yentz. “The plant floor guy will have to figure out how to get that data to the enterprise system and do it without stopping tire production.”

The quality team is an additional customer seeking data from the plant floor. “The quality staff has been relying on plant data for a while now,” says Bob Mick, vice president of emerging technology at ARC Advisory Group Inc., based in Dedham, Mass. “If you’re making razor blades, quality doesn’t matter. But if you’re making chemicals, you need to exchange data. In process, ...