Software increases manufacturing efficiency

Aspen Technology'saspenONE 2004 Update 2, helps companies maximise throughput, protect quality and manage energy costs.

Aspen Technology's aspenONE 2004 Update 2, now commercially available, offers process companies the ability to meet many of their most difficult challenges - safely maximising throughput, ensuring consistent product quality, managing energy costs and speeding product innovation.

Featuring several important new applications and a significant number of enhancements to existing products, Update 2 is the third in a series of synchronised releases for AspenTech's aspenONE integrated software solutions.

"The growing adoption of our integrated aspenONE solutions validates the value we have delivered to our customers by unifying our industry-standard applications into vertically focussed offerings, and we are extremely gratified with our progress to date," said Blair Wheeler, Senior Vice President, AspenTech.

"We are pleased to announce the availability of aspenONE 2004 Update 2, which features many of the enhancements our customers told us they require to meet new market demands and improve their competitive positions".

"Integrating our best-in-class applications into aspenONE solutions enables process companies to make quicker, more profitable decisions," added Wheeler.

"By continuing to improve the underlying applications that are the foundation for these solutions, we ensure that customers realise maximum value from their investments in our software".

Among the new products available in Update 2 are Aspen Tasc+ and Aspen Acol+, intended for designing, rating and simulating shell and tube and cross-flow heat exchangers, respectively.

Both products offer a comprehensive interface to the Aspen Plus and Aspen HYSYS simulation and modelling applications.

Aspen Energy Cost Manager, also available for the first time, helps process manufacturers reduce energy costs by as much as 8%.

Since operating costs associated with supplying energy typically make up 30 to 60% of a plant's operating budget, improvements in energy management provide immediate financial benefits that are sustainable with little to no capital investment.

Aspen Golden Batch Profiler, targeted at specialty chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturers, allows operators to monitor tags in real-time against an ideal, or "golden" batch profile, and automatically selects the correct profile for each batch.

In a related development, Aspen Q for Aspen Process Explorer has been enhanced to support batch to batch statistical process control (SPC) using characteristic values from Aspen Batch 21.

Aspen OpsKPI, designed for batch and continuous processes, enables process manufacturers to measure plant progress against real-time, operational key performance indicators (KPIs).

This new application provides out-of-the-box operator dashboard and target display capabilities and is tightly integrated with Aspen Process Explorer, Aspen Calc, Aspen Batch 21 and Aspen InfoPlus 21.

Aspen OpsKPI puts the cost of KPI noncompliance directly in the operator's hands for improved decision making.

Update 2 also includes significant enhancements to many of AspenTech's existing applications, including some of the widely accepted new products introduced in aspenONE 2004 Update 1.

Among these products is Aspen Simulation Workbook, an important component of AspenTech's strategy to dramatically improve the interoperability between AspenTech's simulation products and the Microsoft Office Suite.

Built on the integration capabilities of Aspen Open Simulation Environment (OSE), which allows users to share the same internal and third-party engineering and operations models, Aspen Simulation Workbook enables users in the plant to reliably predict plant performance with the power of process simulation without requiring any simulation expertise.

Enhancements to Aspen Icarus help manufacturers estimate current and future projects with new capabilities for building civil and structural models and estimating larger electrical systems.

Aspen Zyqad provides new features that support widely-encountered revamp and retrofit projects, as well as new facilities, and also offers out-of-the box capabilities for integrating with Intergraph applications.

In addition, technical enhancements have been made to Aspen InfoPlus 21, AspenTech's core historian and real-time applications platform; Aspen RateSep, an application for rate-based separation; Aspen State Space Controller, a multi-variable controller for non-olefin bulk chemicals and continuous specialty chemicals; Aspen BatchSep, a simulation tool for designing and optimising batch distillation processes; and Aspen RefSYS, a multi-unit refinery modelling application, which features the addition of a hydrocracker reactor model.

aspenONE is delivered on a single set of DVDs with a common installation procedure and license manager and is built on the Microsoft platform.

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