For many organizations, it can be extremely difficult to track their mission-critical engineering documents properly. While engineering updates are occurring simultaneously, other departments are continually making changes. This is one example of concurrent engineering, where independent changes from different parts of the organization are performed at the same time.
When these changes overlap, they generally have common interdependencies. This is another example of concurrent engineering, where the same documents, piping and instrumentation designs, general arrangements, process guidelines, etc., must be reformatted as part of two or more separate initiatives. The complexity of multiple changes to engineering documents at the same time puts a strain on engineering teams.
In addition, maintenance teams will make changes in the field to ensure smooth and efficient plant operations. Typically, these changes are marked up on engineering drawings that the technicians have printed out for reference. Then, these marked-up printouts are handed over to the engineering team to incorporate the changes into the current documentation set.
When working on multiple concurrent projects, with an extended network of contractors, it can be difficult to manage documents and drawings. The complexity of engineering information means that all relations must be preserved, even during an exchange before handover. If left undone, unmanaged risk becomes a reality. Uncontrolled information is a major hazard in any engineering environment. When different departments and stakeholders have to create, modify, approve, and use documents in separate systems, the risk of information loss or duplications increases.
Whenever there are small maintenance changes coupled with an expansion project, it is imperative that owner-operators have access to up-to-date, as-built information. Without up-to-date, as-built information, the projects can take longer, cost more, and make the handover process more cumbersome. During concurrent engineering projects, maintaining the quality, accuracy, and completeness of data and metadata becomes virtually impossible if the stakeholders do not work in a unified system.
Manage your engineering information in a centralized data repository, request a demo of our engineering information management solution.
Meridian offers owners and operators a comprehensive system to manage their engineering information, while providing a centralized data repository, safely sharing and housing all technical documentation related to assets along with the tag-document relations. Because of the tag-document relation, operations and maintenance can find technical documentation easily, including previous versions.
With our solution, all mission-critical engineering documentation is stored in a single system and can be made available to the extended organization, connecting operations and maintenance departments seamlessly to engineering to work safely and efficiently. Our solution integrates with well-known enterprise asset management systems, so that maintenance teams working on assets in the field have access to the asset-related information. Before a work order is even executed, all asset-related documentation is already at hand.
By using the concurrent engineering functionality available in our engineering information management solution, users can track documents to ensure projects run in parallel, error-free, while also providing users real-time visibility to monitor revisions from different projects and ongoing maintenance. Project members associated with the same documents are notified automatically when a parallel project releases updated documents, avoiding unnecessary delays and shortening project turnaround times.
Unlike most departmental solutions that are limited and not purpose-built from inception, Accruent provides a complete solution to manage all concurrent plant modifications (small, medium and large) to maintain as-built master data for operations and maintenance. Meridian allows organizations to manage concurrent engineering for seamless project handover and easy audits. Customers can see a reduction in cost realized through the decrease in downtime, through immediate access to all necessary as-built data, leading to quicker repairs and saving organizations money.
Because of its fluctuating nature, the importance of concurrent engineering within the process manufacturing industry is significant. For multiple plants, this rate of change increases dramatically. Accruent’s engineering information management solution serves as the single source of truth, so that users can share the workload, and organizations can facilitate the data handover process from engineering to operations & maintenance.
Store all your mission-critical engineering documentation in a single system. Schedule a demo today!
