The industrial gases industry is largely a “local” business that is in part driven by numerous production plants in multiple locations whose products are then delivered to customers nearby. In many cases, these plants can be located in areas that are by nature “remote” to support such activities as oil and gas refining, mining and metals production, etc. For such facilities, a key capability is the power to predict and avoid costly downtime. The ability to capture real-time health and status insights of remotely located equipment allows intelligent operation and greatly improves asset and supply chain performance. Based on its historical operation of more than 350 plants globally, Air Products has developed the trademarked system, ProcessMD, a plant data-based, auto-learning, and adaptive model that collects data in real time through the cloud and provides predictive maintenance and other performance management capabilities. The ProcessMD system is now also offered as a digital service to third-party customers for their own facilities. The “holy grail” of chemicals product manufacturing and delivery is a fully integrated and automated supply chain, and the development of ProcessMD offers lessons along the journey and history relative to plant automation, advanced controls, remote sensing, and telemetry, as well as more recently advanced analytics, nontraditional data, machine learning, and the cloud in order to ultimately achieve a fully digitized supply chain.
Key Business Benefits:
- Work toward fully integrated and automated supply chain
- Lessons on plant automation, advanced controls, remote sensing, and telemetry
- Overview of the ProcessMD system
