Ask Ron Besuijen

Ron's Response:

Developing a simulator program involves a financial commitment and resources to be successful. This continues after the initial installation of the facility. One of the first questions asked when considering a simulator facility is the cost and how it can be justified. It is a business decision like any other new improvement to the process. 

There are several ways to justify a simulator program. I believe the largest is operator competency. To be blunt, no one wants their company to be part of a Chemical Safety Board bulletin. This does not mean that it was operations that caused the incident, it means that if they must respond to an evolving situation and if they are more than just qualified, they may be able to prevent an incident from escalating. These types of incidents involve the loss of life, hundreds of millions of dollars of production losses, and equipment damages. It is difficult for someone who has not worked a control panel during an upset to imagine how quickly you can become cognitively overloaded. 

To maintain competency tasks must be practiced periodically. Reliability improvements and the time between major maintenance shutdowns being extended can leave operations rusty in executing these tasks. A simulator recertification program will ensure operations is prepared to respond to upsets and safely handle shutdowns. 

Simulator programs have become a key instrument in improving our environmental performance and reducing flaring. This is a natural extension of on-stream time. Shutdowns and startups require flaring. Strategies to reduce flaring can be trialed on a simulator. Several approaches can be tested and refined while measuring the amount of flaring required. Safe Park applications can be developed and tested with a simulator with flaring reductions in mind. 

Advanced control systems can be developed and tested on a simulator. There are always challenges implementing these systems that are difficult to anticipate in our dynamic processes. Flushing these out on a simulator reduces process upsets and flaring. The run time of these control systems can also be improved by training the operators on their function and how to troubleshoot problems. 

Control system software updates can be tested on a simulator. This not only highlights errors, but it also gives the control technicians a chance to train and perfect the software roll out. Major process upsets have occurred from control system software updates. Of course, the most effective testing is when the simulator system as close to the live system as possible. 

Periodically the control system is replaced with new hardware and software. This is a very disruptive period for operations as it typically involves new graphics and interfaces. These can be developed and tested on a simulator to minimize the errors in the diagrams and the links from the objects. Operations can also be trained on the new graphics to complete routine tasks and to manage upsets. New graphics can considerably slow down even an experienced operator until they learn where to find everything.

There are many ways to justify a simulator program. In many facilities if you can increase your onstream time by 1% the program will more than pay for itself.