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Owner-Operator Forum Presents Case for Driving Technology Directions
Discusses Reasons for Formation; Encourages Owner-Operators to Join PlantSuccess `99, Philadelphia, Pa., September 26, 1999 - The Owner-Operator Forum will present its reasons for forming, its goals and directions, and encourage other owner-operators to join the organization during a session at PlantSuccess `99, from 8:45 to 10am on September 28, 1999. During the presentation, Mr. Joe Morray, president of Trinity Technologies and program manager for the Owner-Operator Forum, will introduce the founding board, including representatives from Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., BASF Corporation, The Dow Chemical Company, DuPont, and Merck & Co., Inc. "Owner-operators are looking for technologies that deliver value and opportunity for improving the way they do business. The Forum founders have created this organization to encourage technology and equipment vendors to develop tools that respond to their specific needs," says Morray. "In general, we were not getting the response from the vendors we wanted relative to the systems we need to accomplish asset creation and maintenance," says Jim Sohaney, a Forum founder from Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. "With the founding of the Owner-Operator Forum, we are hoping to influence the vendors to give us an architecture that is flexible, plug and play, interchanges data with other vendors, and responds to our needs for the life cycle of our plants." "Most of the software on the market suits the project engineering environment. We want to encourage the same development in the maintenance and production environment," says George Schnurr, the Owner-Operator Forum founding member from BASF Corporation. "Granularity of access is a good example of this problem. In a project, it is easy to control who has access to the design environment. But in an operating environment, any number of groups needs to be able to access the data simultaneously. Tools to accomplish this need to be delivered." "We have many projects going on at one time, on a global basis," says Steve Lorenz, the Forum founder from DuPont. "There is an opportunity to better adapt components or process steps that were designed, built, and operated for one project and apply them to another project. We would like for it to be easy for our businesses to make use of data that already exists. Our thinking is that once we invest in an engineer's knowledge about one part of a facility, it should be easy to apply that to other facilities and reuse the data and the knowledge. This should have an impact beyond an engineer's productivity on a project to impact manufacturing and maintenance costs over the life of a facility." Lorenz continues, "We are looking for tools that help our business gain value for a facilities entire life, which could be 20 years or more. This is in contrast with the life of a capital project, which may be only two years." "Owner-operators need a standard way to exchange information between dissimilar systems," comments Larry Killingsworth of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. 'The cost savings of exchanging information effectively can be substantial. The Forum has embraced STEP as a part of the solution to this issue." ""Traditionally, software suppliers have been driven by EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) contractors requirements," says Robert Donaho, a Forum founder from The Dow Chemical Company. "Our conclusion was that there was an opportunity to come together with other owner-operators and make clear the tools and capabilities needed by owner-operators." Mr. Robert Kwok from The Dow Chemical Company and Mr. Leonard Avdey from Merck & Co., Inc. are also founding member of the Owner-Operator Forum. A Sign of the Times, Research Indicates The Owner-Operator Forum echoes sentiments voiced in an Industry Week survey of 78 manufacturing firms last year that the quality of information systems is among the top concerns of CEOs. Likewise, a survey by Trinity of 30 leading process industry owner/operators revealed a large gap between what technologies are available and how well companies can assimilate them to remain competitive. According to the survey, 80 percent of managers judged information management as critical to competitiveness. Yet only 15 percent of respondents rated their company's IT implementations as above average. About the Owner-Operator Forum For more information about the mission and membership in the Owner-Operator Forum, please visit www.owneroperatorforum.com. |