Honeywell (NYSE: HON) Process Solutions announced the launch of LEAP project services to help manufacturers in the processing industries get their plants up and running faster and at lower cost.
LEAP combines Honeywell Process Solutions proprietary hardware and software, virtualization and cloud engineering to give users greater scheduling flexibility while reducing risk and total automation costs by up to 30 percent. Multiple industries can benefit from an estimated 80 percent reduction in costs related from unnecessary rework. These features can also help reduce avoidable schedule delays by up to 90 percent.
“Automation projects are increasingly difficult to manage — especially as implementations become larger and more complex while still needing to be completed quickly and efficiently,” said Vimal Kapur, president, Honeywell Process Solutions. “LEAP turns project execution workflow on its head, simplifying what has traditionally been a long and expensive process and enabling measurable time and cost savings so plants can focus on the end goal of getting up and running quickly.”
The innovative approach is being featured this week at the 2014 Honeywell Users Group Americas Symposium, the company’s largest gathering of industrial customers. More than 1,200 attendees, representing major oil and gas refining, chemical, pulp and paper, and metals and mining companies, among others, are attending the symposium in San Antonio, Texas.
LEAP represents a major departure from the way plants are typically designed and built by using parallel workflows to keep automation systems off critical implementation paths. Traditionally, sequential workflows call for the automation and controls to be implemented during a specified timeframe before the rest of the plant can be completed. This approach poses challenges such as managing changes, which can affect all subsequent steps of the implementation and threaten project schedules and budgets.
LEAP creates separate streams of work for the physical and functional aspects of project design. This approach allows project engineering to take place from anywhere in the world, and removes workflow dependencies to allow core project tasks to start much earlier in the process. It also dramatically minimizes the cost and volume of rework typically associated with automation projects.
LEAP specifically combines three key core technologies available in Honeywell’s Experion PKS Orion:
- Universal Channel Technology – Honeywell’s proprietary solution allows instant remote configuration of channel types, standardized input/output cabinets, reduction or elimination of marshalling cabinets and reduction in equipment needed.
- Virtualization – Use of virtual machines in the control system removes dependencies between the functional and physical design, enables standardized server cabinets, reduces hardware requirements and delivers corresponding savings in space, power, cooling and weight.
- Cloud Engineering – Engineering in a secure, centrally hosted cloud environment allows project execution and testing anywhere in the world, delivering improvements in collaboration and travel savings.
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