Paul Martin Executive manager at Hexagon’s PPM division
Paul has 27 years of experience across engineering software industries. His primary focus has been the application of piping and plant design software to improve work processes and solve engineering problems.
Leaders in the food & beverage industry are rapidly establishing a competitive advantage by digitalising their work processes.
Deploying centralised information management systems and digital engineering and design tools allows companies to create, control and analyse critical plant information at any point during a facility’s lifecycle.
These increased efficiencies help improve profitability – and open up a competitive advantage.
The importance of partnerships
Recognising the value of digitalisation means that digital transformation skills are increasingly in high demand – now and for the foreseeable future. As early adopters accelerate their operations, others cannot afford to be left behind, even if they cannot employ the specialists they need.
External partnerships, therefore, will be critical in helping get digitalisation projects underway. These partnerships continue after an optimised state of operations is reached, so digital leaders in the F&B industry will need to establish relationships for many years to come to ensure their business and facilities remain at the forefront in the digitalisation age.
Finding the right technology partner that understands the F&B industry’s unique challenges is crucial across all stages of a facility’s lifecycle. Hexagon’s CADWorx & Analysis Solutions offer the F&B industry a powerful toolset to support the digitalisation of the engineering and design of production facilities across their lifecycle, enabling a valuable digital asset information handover to be provided to the facility owner.
These digital solutions support innovation and deliver quality during the design and engineering phases. The intelligent facility models and engineering data that they contain, created during design, can be used to maintain the facility providing further value and benefit for the facility owner/operator in the long-term.
A real-life project example: PPV Engineering
PPV Engineering, a Dutch EPC company, was hired to fit new product storage tanks in an existing butter-making facility in the Netherlands. The project’s goal was to reuse surplus products and find a hygienic way of storing both the leftover and new products created from it. The company worked with Hexagon PPM division’s CADWorx & Analysis Solutions to ensure the project’s timely and efficient delivery.
First, PPV Engineering and its customer defined the scope of the project. Next, the companies executed research to determine the design of the process, the changes that were needed for the building structure, and the capacities of the various storage tanks that would need to be installed to support the new food production process.
Hexagon’s CADWorx® Plant Professional was used for basic engineering. First, the existing facility was surveyed to determine space available for the new tanks as the customer did not have existing detailed drawings of the plant available. Their customer informed PPV Engineering that the maximum space available for the new tank installation was approximately 75m2. Next, a preliminary installation design was created, and the client approved the installation plan.
When asked about his experience with Hexagon solutions, Willem Bazuin, owner of PPV Engineering, said: “CADWorx Plant Professional is an open programme and enables easy customisation where needed. Especially when it comes to modifications, the software enables tremendous time savings. This is the case particularly when implementing the CADWorx P&ID module and using it together with the plant design.”
Curious to learn more about how intelligent engineering and plant design solutions can help digitalise project execution and improve project delivery? Watch Hexagon’s free on-demand webinar.
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