University of South Australia Participates in Interoperability Keynote
The University of South Australia was recently involved in a keynote interoperability demonstration and panel discussion at the Digital Plant Expo in Houston, Texas. The demo and discussion was courtesy of the Knowledge and Software Engineering Lab and was led by Professor Markus Stumptner, CIEAM Lead Researcher, University of South Australia.
The main expo page lists this demo as one of the highlights and describes it as “an exclusive first-time, open standards-based interoperability demonstration from the North West Redwater Bitumen Refinery Project (CIEAM/Fiatech/MIMOSA/NWR Partnership/PCA).”
The demo overview featured the Transform Engine including the UniSA part, which is powered by Cincom® VisualWorks® and the DoME modelling tool.
A more detailed description of the demo can be found on the MIMOSA site at http://www.mimosa.org/?q=news/interoperability-demonstration-special-presentation-and-industry-roundtable-digital-plant-2011.
Related conference sessions included:
Interoperability for a New Bitumen Refinery (Best Practice Story) C.C. (Cliff) Pedersen, Chief Information Officer, North West Redwater Partnership
On February 16, 2011, the Alberta government announced the BRIK Programme (Bitumen Royalties In Kind) that will give oil-sands producers the option to pay royalties on their production in bitumen barrels in lieu of cash. Simultaneously, a contract was signed with North West Redwater Partnership (NWR) to market and process those bitumen barrels. NWR is a 50-50 partnership between North West Upgrading Inc. (NWU) and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL), which proposed to design, construct and operate a new 77,000 BPD “Bitumen Refinery” near Redwater AB (http://www.nwrpartnership.com/). This special session illustrated the role of the Canadian oil sands in the world’s petroleum supply situation, described the process design that NWR has proposed, outlined the project that will build and commission the new refinery and identified the systems design that will provide and support all of the required plant, business and project functions and processes. Integration and interoperability among systems/applications will be accomplished through the implementation of a systems architecture based on industry-standard open interoperability—the first phase of which was discussed and demonstrated.
Roundtable: Implementing Industry-Standards-Based Interoperability
A panel of industry experts who are directly involved in lifecycle interoperability projects leveraging standards including ISO 15926, MIMOSA and OpenO&M discussed recent experiences, current activities and near-term directions for their efforts. Professor Stumptner who chairs the Joint MIMOSA/PCA O&M SIG provided insights into the challenges and opportunities associated with standards-based interoperability. He also facilitated the discussion. Professor Stumpter served as the moderator, and panelists included:
- C.C. (Cliff) Pedersen, Chief Information Officer, North West Redwater Partnership
- Alan Johnston, Open O&M Chair, Open O&M Initiative
- Nils Sandsmark, Director, POSC Caesar
- Nicole Testa Boston, Deputy Director, Fiatech
- Ron Montgomery SME, Subject Matter Consultant, RONCO PAC
- Barbara Migl, CAE Technology Leader, The Dow Chemical Company