Protomation has successfully completed its first remote Factory Acceptance Test (FAT), recording a major milestone in the development of STAMI DIGITAL solutions.
Carried out over 15 days, the test was a vital step in the development of the customized Operator Training Simulator (OTS) that will be used to train the operators of a new HPPO (Hydrogen Peroxide to Propylene Oxide) plant in Hungary. The plant is being built for end user MOL Group by Protomation’s client, thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions (tkIS). The licensor is a joint venture of tkIS and Evonik.
Protomation Lead Engineer Jesús González Rebordinos said the remote test had required good planning and flexible solutions. “This is a milestone. Even in person, the FAT is a challenging operation. From the Netherlands, we supported tkIS and Evonik as we all worked remotely in our application, communicating in parallel via Microsoft Teams. They took the role of operators, performing start-ups and shut-downs and testing different scenarios. After each 8-hour session, we implemented fixes and updated the application directly.”
Jesús during the remote Factory Acceptance Test
Remote solution
To enable the FAT to be performed remotely, Protomation created a cloud solution involving the use of virtual machines within which the platform software was installed and the OTS was run. This allowed for the client and Protomation to operate within the same OTS at the same time from different locations.
Digital vision
Protomation is a specialist IT company, and long-term Stamicarbon partner, dedicated to developing software applications and state-of-the-art operator training simulators (OTS) for the chemical process industry. The company was recently acquired by Stamicarbon and is the foundation of STAMI DIGITAL – Stamicarbon’s range of digital products and services for operator training, real-time process monitoring and plant optimization. Through STAMI DIGITAL, Stamicarbon has the ambition to harness the power of real-time data to help plants reduce energy, lower emissions and increase output.
For more information about STAMI DIGITAL, visit https://www.stamicarbon.com/stami-digital