Jun 5 - Intergraph Releases SmartPlant Foundation 2008

home · about · advertise

Corporate
Sponsors

Search:

advertisement
What's new in SolidWorks 2009?
Watch the demo here.

advertisement
HP Workstations bring ideas to life for Orange County Choppers. Learn more

TenLinks Partners

CADdepot

CADdigest

CADtalent

Innovate3D

FreeCAD

upFront.eZine

NewsBreak

Intergraph Releases SmartPlant Foundation 2008

See Also

·	Intergraph website
·	CAD - Piping, Plant Design - list of products and companies by TenLinks
·	related news

HUNTSVILLE, AL, June 5, 2008 - Intergraph has released SmartPlant Foundation 2008 with significant and unique new engineering collaboration capabilities. "Domain" technology allows multiple disciplines to concurrently work on shared engineering subject matter.

Intergraph's customers who partnered in the design of SmartPlant Foundation 2008 have indicated that this multiple domain approach has the potential to dramatically improve their business performance. Reduction in overall time, increase in cross–discipline quality and reliability of execution are the effects of this engineering collaboration platform.

Domain technology supports modern engineering data management practice overcoming many of the artificial IT limitations common today. Conventional PDM/PLM technologies lock engineering content deep inside multiple files, thereby hiding the detailed cross-discipline changes. Conversely, data warehouse technologies expose all data and force users to deal with "data overwrites" from other disciplines before they are ready to re–synchronize their own application data. With SmartPlant Foundation's new "Domain" technology, each discipline's content is isolated from change by others while available to all, and without the need for it all to be initially consistent.

Intergraph refers to this as "managed inconsistency," and it reflects the true engineering processes used today, harmonizing the opposite forces of innovation and change with those of quality and consistency. SmartPlant Foundation's powerful information domain comparison tools provide rapid identification of these data inconsistencies, allowing subject matter experts to analyze cross-discipline information and determine the ideal engineering solution, ultimately supporting the synchronization of consistent information between many applications.

Japan's Chiyoda Corp., a world leading international engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company, collaborated with Intergraph to conceive the concept of independent engineering domains. "Chiyoda is stepping up its efforts to become the ‘Reliability No. 1' project company," said Takashi Kubota, president and chief executive officer, Chiyoda. "Chiyoda's principal engineering information management system, ‘i-PLANT21' is a key to achieve it. Intergraph solutions play a major role in i-PLANT21.

"In 2002, Chiyoda and Intergraph together started working on the i-SPF project, which focused on global concurrent engineering," Kubota said. "We are quite pleased to have worked directly with Intergraph and to contribute directly to the design of SmartPlant Foundation 2008. The new Domain feature of SmartPlant Foundation 2008 introduces truly advanced integration capabilities that open the door for enterprise integration and life cycle information management."

Celebrating its 10th year in the market, with 200 customers worldwide, SmartPlant Foundation 2008 is an engineering information management system, an engineering document management system, an engineering data warehouse, an application integration hub and an information portal – all in one. Now EPCs and owner operators can identify and manage the change of data across the engineering enterprise, ensuring that decisions are based on correct facts (or more appropriately, the best available information while understanding the discrepancies), reducing their exposure to error, risk and hence cost.

"SmartPlant Foundation 2008 delivers the capabilities that modern projects need, while creating a path for long term life cycle management of the information," said Patrick Holcomb, executive vice president, Intergraph Process, Power & Marine. "Engineering is a volatile, iterative, negotiated set of transactions where disciplines release data to each other concurrently to meet ever shortening milestones, comparing and driving out inconsistencies in the design along the way. With SmartPlant Foundation's multiple domains, engineers now have the control they need to allow them to do what they do best — make intelligent engineering decisions based on up–to–date, trustworthy information."

Also included in the release of SmartPlant Foundation 2008 are three other major new capabilities — Concurrent Engineering, Progress and SmartPlant Foundation Web Portal:

Concurrent Engineering allows owner operators to execute multiple projects simultaneously on the same plant items and associated documentation, and then consolidate changes into the as-built record of the plant.
Progress provides a status and rollup reporting of engineering completeness – planned, actual and forecast. It delivers a level of feedback to planners and schedulers necessary to allow for re-planning to meet project deadlines – the first real step to program management for engineering projects
SmartPlant Foundation Web Portal provides access to engineering information via a project role-based portal interface – such as provided by Microsoft SharePoint, without the need for any native desktop tools to be used by the remote user. Full access and security control are maintained without intellectual assets being exposed to unauthorized users.

These capabilities help to consistently manage data across the enterprise — for EPCs they ensure that the integrity of their data or intellectual property is not lost, and for owner operators they allow for multiple modifications without planning shutdowns or interrupting day-to-day business operations.

About Intergraph

Intergraph is the leading global provider of engineering and geospatial software that enables customers to visualize complex data. Businesses and governments in more than 60 countries rely on Intergraph's industry-specific software to organize vast amounts of data into understandable visual representations and actionable intelligence. Intergraph's software and services empower customers to build and operate more efficient plants and ships, create intelligent maps, and protect critical infrastructure and millions of people around the world.

Intergraph operates through two divisions: Process, Power & Marine (PP&M) and Security, Government & Infrastructure (SG&I). Intergraph PP&M provides enterprise engineering software for the design, construction and operation of plants, ships and offshore facilities. Intergraph SG&I provides geospatially-powered solutions to the defense and intelligence, public safety and security, government, transportation, photogrammetry, utilities, and communications industries.

For more information, visit www.intergraph.com.

----------

If news like this is important to you, sign up for our TenLinks Daily at http://www.tenlinks.com/NEWS/sub_unsub.htm.

Source: Material used in press releases is often supplied by external sources and used as is.