Knowledge Interoperability in Pulp & Paper ecosystems

The process plant industry, and in particular one-of-a-kind deliveries to the pulp and paper industry segment, is an area where Finnish and European companies and know-how have traditionally had a strong position. This applies to the design and delivery of complete process plants as well as to the manufacturing of machinery for the industry. Competition in the field continuously increases while the number of new green field deliveries is simultaneously decreasing. Consequently, companies are interested in improving all business functions including information logistics and there is a strong demand for co-operation and information interoperability support from the partners delivering and servicing the plant.

A large process plant delivery involves quite a number of partners having a variety of roles in the network. The delivery contains design offices, process equipment providers, construction companies, system providers, local entrepreneurs and logistics operators. All the activities and knowledge created during the delivery phase need to be managed by the project manager in close cooperation with the owner and future operator of the plant. The collaborative information logistics has developed to a complex process where all the actors should follow the common practices. Traditional project management tools are not sufficient to manage this process between heterogeneous and multi-cultural partners.

To respond to the industrial demand, the company Pöyry has implemented a structured plant information model concept to support the plant information management throughout the plant lifecycle. This model has new challenges  when implementation is done in a networked environment (figure 1).

The COIN use case will experiment, trial and demonstrate the COIN Collaborative Project Management Services focusing on the continuous project alignment between the collaboration partners. The partners may be geographically distributed and they all have their own environment with their own business processes and cultures.

The business benefits we are looking for are:

• Improve active project communication
• Support modern collaboration sw usage (social software!)
• A new faster way to define what to do in a project
• A new faster way to define how to do it in the project
• Time needed to acquire sufficient project work practice and engineering knowledge.
• A way to find who is able to do it in the project
• Time to find the information about available skill
• The Project Alignment Model (simplified Maturity Model) is a unified way to present knowledge and skill levels. The model can be used in all engineering offices world-vide
  
• Visualisation of skill levels in different offices and partners