For 16 years now, chemical company BASF has been honoring outstanding partnerships and first-class performance at their Ludwigshafen site with the Contractor Award. In July, the award ceremony was once again held in a wide variety of trade categories. 11 trades, 11 winners - including VESCON Process.

This year, our project team was nominated for its outstanding planning services in 2022 while working for our long-standing major client:

“We have been a reliable partner to BASF for a number of years, and support our client in the fields of plant design, strength calculations and periodic inspections, and process engineering and documentation”, explains Stefan Ruthmann, Managing Director of VESCON Process.

What services exactly are we talking about?

"In our services, we encompass our process engineering designs, such as safety valves, equipment calculations, documentation, and P&ID processing. Additionally, our 3D plant planning team creates digital models of facilities using tools like AVEVA PDMS or E3D. This allows us to generate construction plans for piping and steel structures required for production at BASF. Our pipe statics team is responsible for safety assessments within such facilities, ensuring that the piping systems, often subjected to extreme temperatures and high pressures, are sufficiently stable and secure", explains Marcel Claros, Head of department for strength calculations and periodic inspections.

The team deservedly triumphed over two other candidates in the end due to its extensive range of services and great flexibility when it comes to project development. The prestigious prize was proudly received by Marcel Claros and Thomas Wolf [Head of Process Engineering VESCON Process] during the formal ceremony.

"We're truly honored to receive this award. It underscores the incredible results we can achieve through teamwork and unwavering dedication", Stefan Ruthmann concluded with gratitude.

Learn more about VESCON Process services here.

In times when connected and digital production processes are constantly growing, unfortunately, cyberattacks are no longer uncommon. However, the security of our customers' sensitive information is our top priority. In all of our plant projects and company processes, we place the utmost importance on protecting their data. In doing so, we at VESCON Automation adhere to the requirements of major OEMs in the automotive industry, which require the so-called TISAX® certification for collaboration – an increasing number of companies are following this example. As of this year, VESCON Automation is also officially certified to the TISAX® standard.

What's behind the TISAX® certification audit, exactly?

TISAX stands for "Trusted Information Security Assessment Exchange" and is an assessment and exchange procedure for information security in the automotive industry. This standard is based on ISO/IEC 27001 and aims to establish an Information Security Management System (ISMS). The goal is to protect sensitive and confidential customer data of automotive companies and ensure their integrity and availability.

Our journey to TISAX® certification:

What security requirements do we need to meet? How do we ensure information security in project business? What standards do we need to implement for that? These are questions that we at VESCON Automation have been actively addressing in this year as part of the TISAX® certification audit.

Thanks to the excellent preparation and execution by our IT specialists and colleagues involved, VESCON Automation has successfully passed the important TISAX® audit on the first attempt.

"Getting TISAX® certified is a clear sign of our commitment to keeping information secure. It also shows that we're a dependable partner for projects. As a team, we're genuinely proud of this achievement,” Antonio Cavotta, management VESCON Automation.

You can find more about VESCON Automation's services here.

What do a ballet performance and virtual commissioning have in common? At first glance, not much, but they are enormously similar in terms of their approach: planning, rehearsing, correcting - until every detail of the choreography and every dancer’s move has been rehearsed. In the case of virtual commissioning, the installations control software is run, tested and optimized on a virtual model at an early stage of implementation. This is often carried out in conjunction with a cinematic 3D representation of the system. This means the errors can be detected and corrected before actual commissioning, so that the "premiere" is able to go off without a hitch. In our plant projects, such as converting a final vehicle assembly line with an electric monorail system (EMS), virtual commissioning has been an obligatory component for several years. However, many mechanical and plant engineers at mainly medium-sized companies still express their reservations at times:

“Setting up the virtual model is often seen as just an extra expense. We usually hear people saying things like: 'Our plants are too complex or the plant changes too often to model it.' However, this is exactly where the amazing potential of virtual commissioning comes in" - said Ulrich Reiser, CDO SCIO Automation.

What exactly are the benefits of Virtual Commissioning for our customers?

• The ability to validate the plant control system prior to commissioning:

Without virtual commissioning, you can only test the control system on the real plant. But an ensemble would never go on stage without a dress rehearsal, right? This is particularly essential for complex choreographies. Using virtual commissioning as a virtual dress rehearsal, we check especially complex systems for potential logic errors, which, in the worst-case scenario, might result in downtimes for the end customer. After all, no "dancer" is supposed to deviate from the choreography at the grand entrance! This is how we not only ensure the quality of the product and the process, but we can also significantly reduce the work required and thereby keep cost down for any potential adjustments in the program later on. Downtimes are a major issue, especially for series production in the automotive industry. For orders like our EMS project, it was crucial to use virtual commissioning to identify potential problems and logic errors in the plant PLC beforehand, and to properly prevent them by making adjustments. Within the first two days after commissioning, the plant was already running so stably that we were able to exceed all production targets.

• Increased flexibility over the course of the project:

By using virtual commissioning, we can test the plant and its control system in a systematic and efficient way – while also having a great deal of flexibility. For example, if changes to the plant or its environment occur during the project, we can quickly adapt the virtual model at any time and test the changes without taking any unnecessary risks. This is how we can not only prevent costly downstream adjustments on site, but also ensure that the plant performs as expected when it makes its grand entrance on the end customer’s premises - the commissioning phase.

• Shortened commissioning and project lead time:

Last but not least, virtual commissioning also makes it easier to integrate the machine or system into the real production environment. Although you can't do without the on-site programmer completely, there is significantly less work required. This is an enormous advantage, especially in a global industry such as mechanical and plant engineering. As the EMS project shows: Virtual commissioning allows us to successfully overcome challenges, whether that's due to scheduling demands or unforeseen obstacles such as the coronavirus pandemic, and ensure that the project is completed in a short period of time. Instead of being purely sequential, hardware and electrical design, procurement, PLC development and commissioning can also run in parallel. This makes resource planning more flexible, which keeps implementation and project costs low. Small and medium-sized companies in particular are able to hugely benefit from these advantages.

"We are constantly working on increasing efficiency when it comes to setting up the virtual model to establish virtual commissioning in all projects in the future, irrespective of how complex they are and what the customer’s requirements are. We are doing this the moment, for instance, by extending interfaces for data transfer from previous engineering steps. Our goal is to use the virtual model throughout a plant’s life cycle. This gives us the bandwidth to provide the best support to our customers that we possibly can in terms of  carrying out remote servicing and making changes during operation. We have already successfully implemented this system, which is known as a Digital Twin in an initial project," said Ulrich Reiser.

Read more about virtual commissioning here.

Meet our experts at Motek 2023 in Stuttgart. Experience our Virtual Engineering solutions like virtual commissioning up close from October 10-13!