RAPIDLY GROWING DEMAND FOR
ELECTRIC POWER
India's rapid economic growth has fed an ever-increasing
demand for reliable electric power throughout the
country. This means opportunities for power plant
builders and operators - as well as certain challenges,
including meeting schedules and managing workfl ows on
large-scale projects.
Avantha Power & Infrastructure Limited (Avantha
Power) owns four power plants, is the part owner of
another, and has two more plants under development.
Once all of these projects are fully operational, Avantha
Power will have a total installed capacity of 3,911
megawatts.
To meet its fast-growing business, Avantha Power turned
to product lifecycle management (PLM) technology.
Avantha Power manages its power plant engineering using
Teamcenter® software from Siemens PLM Software.
BIG CHALLENGES, LITTLE TIME
"Power plants represent multifaceted assemblies of
systems and components built on-site by an extended team
of construction workers and engineers," says Janmejaya
Mahapatra, head of Control and Instrumentation at
Avantha Power & Infrastructure Limited. "We work with a
large number of vendors, who are required to deliver their
project segments at the right time so that the overall
project stays on schedule. Managing these projects is
extremely complex, far more complex than our
conventional spreadsheet solution could handle. While it
got us by for a while, the system simply wasn't practical for
such an application over the long haul.
It became cumbersome and slow. It was difficult to find
information. Sharing it with stakeholders, whether
internal or supplierbased, was even more difficult. Keeping
track of project engineering changes and just being able to
manage large volumes of data were way beyond the
capacity of this approach."
By implementing Teamcenter, Avantha Power
management had chosen an effective and efficient system
that would ensure an engineering-driven approach to
power plant installation.
During the evaluation process, it was envisaged that the
right PLM system would enable data to be used to quickly
see the bigger picture or get granular. The requirements
from management included a system that would provide
substantially greater security for authorized users and
better information access compared to its existing
approach. Information re-use was critical, as was capturing
lessons learned and best practices that could be leveraged to
streamline future projects.
However, Avantha Power engineers had one big concern
regarding PLM technology. They felt that it might take too
long to implement, noting that the company simply
couldn't afford any delays in meeting its competitive
challenges and addressing a tough regulatory environment.
"The specialists at Siemens PLM Software convinced us
that we could implement the new system quickly," says
Mahapatra. "And they were good to their word. We were
fully operational with Teamcenter in just six months."
MANAGING PROJECT DATA ACROSS THE
LIFECYCLE OF PROJECTS
Since implementing Teamcenter, the Avantha Power
engineering team enjoys faster access to lifecycle
information about their projects. Already, using Teamcenter
has increased productivity by reducing workflow
turnaround across departments. Visibility into the status of
projects has been greatly improved through reliable
reporting. Authorized users can access a single source of
information via secure web connections from any location. The valuable knowledge and experience gained from each
project is readily available to be re-used on future projects.
Avantha Power engineers say that using Teamcenter is
SACRED, an acronym for Swift Archiving, Commenting,
and Reviewing of Engineering Documents and Drawings.
The use of Teamcenter makes it easy for Avantha Power
to manage drawings and bills of materials (BOMs). Such
easy access to project data across the lifecycle of Avantha
Power projects, including BOMs, speeds project delivery
and substantially improves collaboration among users.
"On a recent thermal project, we managed multiple
workflows - as many as 800 or more at a time - and cut
drawing review time from 21 days to just 7," says Ravinder
Verma, deputy manager of Control and Instrumentation at
Avantha Power & Infrastructure Limited.
Siemens PLM Software partner Avantha Technologies
Ltd. (Avantha Technologies) played a key role in the
software roll out. "Avantha Technologies has been very
supportive and proactive in its approach throughout the
process of implementation and customization of
Teamcenter for our requirements," says Verma. "The
technical team effectively gathered the process
requirements and worked on the continuous improvement
of the application. The team ensured that individual user
intent was reflected. The whole team of Avantha
Technologies deserves special kudos for this achievement!"
Mahapatra concludes, "Using Teamcenter, we can now
readily customize plants to meet customer requirements,
while markedly reducing engineering cycle time and costs.
Our ability to quickly find and re-use the right data makes
this possible. Perhaps most importantly, with Teamcenter,
we are on the critical path to advancing our business goals
and targets, and importantly, helping to meet our country's
demand for energy."