Ask Julie Smith

Julie's Response:

Back in 2019, the new DuPont was formed after the merger and split with Dow. Many sites were struggling to continue their migration projects to move away from the Dow proprietary MOD system. There were also a few cases where shared site infrastructure (utilities, raw materials, etc.) was changing ownership. At one site, we found a case where both of these were happening simultaneously for a highly hazardous material. We convinced the process automation leader to use this case as a pilot to show what our simulation technology can do. It was small enough in scope (less than 200 I/O) that the risk to the project was low; they could always revert to a tie-back version if nothing worked as promised.

Instead, we exceeded expectations. In fact, the more robust simulation helped to identify a design deficiency that would have caused potential problems, allowing the site to address proactively before taking ownership of the asset. We then proceeded to simulate the core processes in support of their migrations over the next 5 years, saving many millions of dollars and ensuring a safe transition.