September 12, 2018 — FieldComm Group announced that Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemical Limited (MRPL), located in Mangalore, India, has been named the FieldComm Group 2018 Plant of the Year. This annual award is presented by FieldComm Group to recognize the people, companies and plant sites around the globe that are using the capabilities of FOUNDATION Fieldbus, HART and WirelessHART technology in real-time applications for improved operations, maintenance and asset productivity. This is the first time ever that a process facility located in India has been awarded this award.
The culture of “doing things better” has been an integral part of MRPL and close coordination between the many disciplines (C&I, Projects, Process Operations, etc.) has enabled them to utilize the information provided by smart devices which has led them to be selected as the 2018 Plant of the Year. In addition to hard cost savings in infrastructure and maintenance time, MRPL continues to receive savings in averted shutdowns and interruptions. In one instance where an unexpected shutdown would have occurred due to valve fault, valve positioner diagnostics identified an issue that allowed MRPL to avoid shutting down Hydrogen generation – saving $60,000 in startup and shutdown costs associated with fuel and energy loss.
Speaking on the importance of open standards and device integration, Ted Masters, President & CEO FieldComm Group states, “End users will continue to use multiple communication protocols in their facilities to optimally address process automation use cases. The most adept users will also take advantage of smart data and the tremendous cost savings enabled through its’ use. MRPL is a great example of using smart data and we are grateful that they applied for and won this year’s FieldComm Group Plant of the Year Award.”
Previous Plant of the Year award recipients include Shell FLNG (Australia), Nucor Steel (USA), Dow Chemical (USA), Monsanto (USA), Shell (Canada), MOL (Hungary), Mitsubishi Chemical (Japan), PVSDA (Venezuela), Statoil (Norway), Sasol Solvents (South Africa), BP (USA), Clariant (Germany) and DuPont (USA).
