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Mr Pölitz, what tool infrastructure does yourcompany operate?As there is still demand for PDS from Inter-graph, we use this as well as the successorproduct SmartPlant 3D. Apart from that, we

have customers in Germany and abroad whoexpect us to work with PDMS. For 2D designwe use Comos.

How high is the percentage of PDS orders?

d i g i t a l P L A N T

That has just increased again – to around 30 to40 percent. We have just landed a big contractfrom an Austrian plant operator that has to befulfilled with PDS 11.

And what do you think of this?I am not exactly delighted about it becausethree 3D tools for a company of our size is really one too many. After introducing Smart-Plant 3D in 2008, we assumed that that wouldbe the end of using PDS for new orders withinthe next three or four years. This expectation,however, was not fulfilled.

What reasons do you see as responsible forthis?Obviously the operators find it very difficult toupgrade 3D models, especially of relativelylarge sites. And certainly, this is associated

“Order processing becomingmore complexand cost pressure mounting”

Frank Pölitz , Head of IT Service at Chemieanlagenbau Chemnitz, on the challenges inorder processing and how design and engineering tools help overcome the situation.

Chemieanlagenbau Chemnitz GmbH (CAC), well established on the internationalmarket for the plant and process engineering business, is an experienced contactfor comprehensive engineering services. As a company, which is based in Chem-nitz/German state of Saxony, it is proud of its more than 45 years of experience inthe fields of refinery and gas technology, petrochemicals, inorganic chemicals aswell as fine and speciality chemicals. In close co-operation with its clients, morethan 250 employees provide all services from planning and construction to thecommissioning of complex plants and plant units.www.cac-chem.de

Headquarters of CAC in Chemnitz/Germany

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C H A L L E N G E S

with considerable cost and certain imponder-ables.

Are there regional differences in the demandfor deliverables?Yes. Towards the east, demand falls off a little.In Russia, for example, one of our most im-portant contract regions, we often find a neu-tral design environment, that is: AutoCAD. This is no problem for us because AutoCADdrawings can be derived from each of thethree design systems. For such orders, we arefree to choose the design system we use internally. The further west we go, though, the more we are tied to the customer’s system.

You opted for SmartPlant 3D. What were themotives behind this?Integraph really pushed SmartPlant 3D at thetime and clearly declared it as the successorproduct for PDS. On the other hand, we werealways very much in favour of data-centricsolutions and SmartPlant finally brought thisapproach to the Intergraph world too. We re-gard it as a future solution. And we said toourselves: if you get somewhere early, you’reguaranteed the best seats. And best seatsmeant for us a lot of support especially fromIntergraph in Germany. We also expected tobe able to influence development because wehad recognized that a lot still had to happenfor this tool to be efficient for use by amedium-sized German company. And na-turally we hoped the prices would bereasonable.

How do you stand overall with regard to theprice of licences?That’s a difficult question. The license feescause considerable costs for us, on the otherhand our customers aren’t prepared to pay forthem. In the last few years, the achievableearnings for one hour of an engineer’s workwere not able to offset the cost developmentfor design software in past years. Never-theless, providing they are used sensibly, thetools do have an effect. But this is difficult toquantify.

But doesn’t it enhance the competitivenessof CAC that it can outwardly claim: “We workwith state-of-the-art design and engineeringtools?”Of course, this represents considerablecounter value. On the other hand, we are con-fronted with enormous cost pressure. It is areal challenge to fully utilize the existinglicenses for three systems. We do try to makethe most of our SmartPlant 3D and our PDMSlicenses.

And what do you think about the rentalmodels offered by the system vendors?

It does help us to an extent, that’s right. Weonly rent PDS licences. With regard to theSmartPlant 3D and the PDMS licenses, we didour calculations based on concrete conditionsat the time and then decided to acquire a basicset of licenses. And we rent additional ones forthese products as needed for certain times.

Are you satisfied with the design tools?Well, being satisfied, that’s a big thing to say!The fact is that they are certainly very complextools in application and subject to ongoingdevelopment. The software vendors are natu-rally also exposed to the trends of the time andthe pressure to follow these. If apps aremodern, then they have to bring out an app,for instance to be able to display Comos dataon an iPad. In the meantime it is in vogue to literally handover the 3D model to a manager,so a mobile application is developed and pro-moted. Occasionally, we get the impression that workon the basic functions — I mean the functionswith which our designers work productively— are pushed into the background. In ad-dition, for example, for SmartPlant 3D comesthe fact that this software originates from theUSA. It needed considerable modifications soit can be used for detail engineering with theprocedures typical in Germany.

What do you mean by that?On the other side of the Atlantic, the phi-losophy is different. Detail engineering is ge-nerally done in the low-wage countries.Insofar, obviously not too much attention ispaid to productivity for detailed engineering.The US companies use, for example, cheap In-dian labour. On the introduction of SmartPlant 3D, thereweren’t any routines for efficient detailengineering. With the growing community ofGerman users, help was provided with the so-called MUC tools from Intergraph Deutsch-land. But that is already the almost distantpast. SmartPlant 3D has long become a prod-uctive tool for us.

Give us an example!Apparatus that, for instance, can be configuredbased on parameters and doesn’t have to bemodelled from geometric primitives.

I understand, you mean libraries for com-ponents ...Precisely!

A different question: What sort of contractdoes CAC like best?First and foremost we try to get EPCM proj-ects. But we are also prepared to provide basicengineering and detail engineering for ourcustomers, and in special cases we also takeon EPC LSTK projects.

And what is the reality?Difficult to say. Speaking for us at least, I cansay that customers are tending to distributebasic and detail engineering to different con-tractors. I presume this is also because thecustomer gets a further test instance in theprocessing of his order. The contractor thattakes over the basic engineering and goes onto the detail engineering has to scrutinize ev-erything again. And sometimes he does thiswith completely different tools. For processengineering simulation, for instance, we usethe tools from AspenTech, from Invensys andfrom ChemStation for counter checking. Youmust know that not all tools are equally goodfor all processes. Moreover, the basic engi-neering sometimes sits in a drawer for a while.

Do you get the impression that somethinghas happened in project controlling?Absolutely. Here our customers seem to haveinvested substantially in additional resources,both in cost control but also with regard tochecking procedures and documents. Now-adays the customer wants to be preciselyinformed about the respective project statusat all times. Sometimes you can’t but help getthe impression that for instance more of thecustomer’s people are busy checking the plantdocumentation than there are our peoplecompiling it. Sure: Nobody is perfect and the design pro-cesses are becoming ever more complex andmore prone to error as a result of the evershort realization times and change require-ments almost right up to the end. Withouttools like those we have just talked about andtheir networking with each other and with ERPsoftware, such requirements could probablyno longer be met.

Many thanks for sharing your views with us!

Interview: BERNHARD D. VALNION

Frank Pölitz

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: CAC

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