Chemical Manufacturing (U.S.)

Planning for Growth
To meet their customers’ needs for seasonal agricultural fertilizers, a chemical manufacturer in the United States had to be ready for the growing season. They planned for a facility expansion to supply agricultural fertilizers, and if start-up was delayed by complications or costs, the company would miss the season, miss opportunities, and miss profits.

Commissioning Saves Time and Money
As the company began planning their automation solution, they recognized the success they had at other facilities using Emerson’s DeltaV™ distributed control system (DCS) and AMS asset management software. Emerson’s user-friendly and robust solution was a natural choice for their current project.
Commissioning went much faster and easier than anticipated thanks to Smart Commissioning. Before the new AMS Device Manager bulk commissioning, the company used to commission devices manually — one at a time for hundreds of devices. Multiple employees used to be paid overtime to complete commissioning on time. 
In the current project, however, HART devices were automatically sensed with AMS Device Manager through the DeltaV DCS. Then, using AMS Device Manager bulk transfer, an implementation team defined configurations for devices via templates based on existing devices. Configurations were defined once and were used many times on devices throughout the expanded facility, driving ease and consistency in the process.
For loop checking, the combination of the DeltaV DCS and AMS Device Manager meant that a single technician at a control room workstation executed loop checks — without another technician working in parallel in the field. The system automatically documented all the steps and saved reporting time.

Time Enough for Unexpected Extra Production 
​​​​​​​With their new capabilities, the organization completed activities in one day that previously would have required a week. Ultimately, commissioning was completed ahead of schedule with no project overruns. Project resources could then be allocated to other tasks on the project.