Notwithstanding the fact that Globalisation is a much-flogged word today, there is no denying that it offers many opportunities and throws challenges in equal measure. Indian engineers have already been transporting their skills to far corners of the world for decades now. The WTO regime could see this process accelerating and also lend a greater deal of professional respectability. Contract manufacturing of bulk drugs and speciality chemicals is an area that has already taken off. With a large pool of qualified engineers, we have the potential to grow global centres of excellence in design and engineering, rather than being restricted to the low-end ‘Call Centres’.

The practice of Chemical Engineering has always required multi-disciplinary skills, the core set being physical chemistry, numerical computation and material science. To be globally successful, chemical engineers need to embellish that core set with a host of others. Awareness of international trade and commerce idiosyncrasies, socio-political equations, regulatory compliance issues, intellectual property rights etc top that list.

Safety, Health and Environment have always taken back seat in the Indian Chemical industry under the guise of developing country. In a ‘Globalised’ regime, industry needs to tighten their belts, lest we give a chance to developed countries to use the stick of Compliance against our cost-effectiveness. We have organised a lecture on the implications of WTO for Indian Chemical Industry this month and a seminar on Safety, Health and Environment Management in January. Hope you will take advantage of them.

I take this opportunity to wish each of our Members and Families `A Happy and Prosperous Diwali.' Let the Lamp of Diwali remove the gloom prevailing in the Chemical Industry and bring cheers to each Chemical Plant and the Chemical Engineers.

It is a striking coincidence that second quarter performance of 2002 has brought lot of cheers to the operating units. Newspapers head lines bring out "India Inc's profits up 55% in Q2"; "PSUs' net jumps 132%"; and "Reliance Q2 net up 25% at Rs.1,002 cr" etc. are pretty good news to the Industry to be happy about. Last but not the least, the Reliance striking gas in Krishna Godavari Offshore ensuring 40 million std. Cu. M. per day of gas is the best news for the country. Today when the current demand of gas is 151 m std. Cu. M. of gas per day, it is reported that the supply is only 60 m std. Cu. M. per day. By the time Reliance production comes to the consumers in next two to three years, the demand for the gas will grow to around 231 m std. Cu. M. Thus even with 40 m std. Cu. M. made available, it would leave still a gap of 125 m std. Cu. M. per day to be filled in by the Suppliers of LNG like Petronet, Shell, etc.

You will be happy to note that National Council Executive Meeting Committee is meeting in Mumbai on 9th November, 2002 and our Mumbai Regional Centre has the privilege of hosting the same. It may provide us a chance to discuss about holding the Chemcon 2004, the annual programme of Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2004, at Mumbai.

Once again best wishes for `A Happy and Prosperous Diwali.'

D.P. Misra

Abstracts from the lecture organised at L&T on 24^th October

IT enabled Project Management encompasses tracking of each and every transaction & documentation associated with an item right from Engineering, through Procurement to Construction upto Commissioning & handing over.

The Engineering and Construction Division of Larsen & Toubro Limited has implemented SAP R/3, an internationally well known ERP software and SAP BW, a business intelligence and data warehousing software for continued growth and competitiveness in the domestic and global EPC market. A considerable amount of customisation and development was required to meet the requirements of the EPC business processes. All business processes including marketing, project management, engineering, procurement, quality management, and finance are covered.

SAP R/3 implementation has enhanced the productivity of the organisation by integrating all business processes in a seamless whole, resulting in the availability of accurate on line information for all concerned people at all locations. SAP R/3 also acts as the foundation for other IT applications like E-Commerce, SCM, CRM etc.

The SAP R/3 implementation helps to achieve the following:

1. Integration of all Functions into one seamless whole.
2. Streamlining of business processes – by adopting uniform business processes across SBUs.
3. Improved Customer Service – by providing accurate on-line information.
4. Improved quality of Decision making –On-Line Reports and Data.
5. Enhanced productivity

• Eliminating duplication of work
• Increased transparency in operation
• Sharing of knowledge and experience across the organization.
• Procedural discipline

Business Intelligence -SAP Business Warehouse :

In today's dynamic situations, the reporting requirements of the project managers are complex and keep changing. Typically he may need to have a list of all purchase orders for his project, or all purchase orders on a particular vendor. The marketing head may like to have a summary of all orders received during the last six months in a particular format. SAP R/3 cannot handle all the requirements in an efficient manner. The reporting tools of SAP R/3 like built in reports and custom developed programs are not designed for complex reporting requirements. SAP R/3 being an On Line Transaction Processing system is designed for filling up thousands of specialised tables that are optimised for tracking the different steps of the various business processes. SAP BW a Business Intelligence application, an On Line Analytical Processing software, takes care of strategic reporting needs and offers flexible and easily accessible reports from SAP R/3 and other data sources. SAP BW is characterised by self-service, high quality business reporting and analysis on all levels and a user friendly excel front-end. Data from other non-SAP R/3 sources can be included in the reports.

E&C’s initiative in e-commerce utilises the Internet for streamlining operations and communications. The theme is to Compress time, cost & distance.

The e-Procurement feature was set up in July 2000 enables the SAP R/3 ERP backend transaction engine to connect to a group of qualified Suppliers through the Internet. The entire Procurement process which includes transporting a vast amount of Drawings, Specification & Standards is made much quicker & cost effective enabling reduction in Project schedules & costs and virtually elimination of barriers of distance. The website was recently upgraded to address additional aspects like a Reverse Auction engine, and other functionalities for enabling effective Supply Chain Management (SCM). The same website also features e-Connect, a collaborative platform for enhancing Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Till now collaborative working was through a combination of phone calls, face-to-face meetings and electronic message traffic. However in the changing business scenario L&T E&C’s project operations would have to be more and more distributed, often at the scene of the action. Today companies are shifting their focus, aiming to increase their competitiveness by improving customer satisfaction and loyalty through enhanced service… "Therefore there is a need to elevate CRM to a strategic corporate level, requiring interconnected solutions that span both the company and the various modes of customer communication, enabling consistent customer service over all customer communication channels."

So there's a common situational awareness of the current state of a project that would be the foundation for delivering better customer service. To address these requirements initially the following three functionalities have been introduced.

1. Customer/Vendor query system

This feature would allow a Customer/Vendor post a query on a specific project. Submission of query triggers an email to the Project Manager and at the same time the query gets logged into the database. The Project Manager submits a reply to the query and if required supported with any attached files containing drawing, specifications etc. triggering an automatic mail back to the initiator.

2. Project Status reporting

Project status reports, which are currently being sent to the customer on predetermined intervals, can now be uploaded on to this platform and the customer can have access to it using his password. Similarly our suppliers too can upload their progress report at pre-defined intervals.

3. Discussion Board

This can be used as virtual meeting forum interaction ("Chat"). Participants can have access to the discussion board using a simple Web browser. These discussions can be saved as text as well as printed for record of discussions.

The EPC business in today’s global scenario is complex in nature, very competitive, knowledge-intensive and risky. Institutionalising a Knowledge capture & sharing system is therefore imperative to have a competitive and strategic advantage in this industry today. An integrated, holistic approach where every employee in the organisation is responsible right from creation to sharing of knowledge is necessary if the organisation is to leverage its information assets for business gain.

At the outset, the system was envisioned, a roadmap was made and a core team gathered user requirements and defined the key objectives to be achieved through use of the KM system such as learn once, convert personal knowledge to organisational knowledge, leverage organisational knowledge for competitive advantage, etc. The system is designed and set up to capture both tacit and explicit knowledge.

The KnowNet comprises 4 elements – Knowledge Online (an intranet developed by L&T Infotech for capturing project experiences), K Station (a front end portal), Domino.doc (a Document Management System) and Sametime (a real time collaboration tool for sharing applications / documents, text messaging with audio-video capability). All the applications are based on Lotus platform, the last 3 being standard products with minor customisation.

The implementation and institutionalisation, which is currently on, is based on the classical steps of creating / organising repositories, providing knowledge access / security, enhancing knowledge environment, institutionalising KM as a business process and managing knowledge as an asset. The HR & Personnel Department is an integral part of the institutionalising process.

AMIC together with Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE, Mumbai Regional Center) organised this seminar on 28^th September 2002. Over 100 delegates attended the seminar from Industry and Academia. The large number of attendance showed the keen interest of practicing Chemical Engineers from both industry and academia due to a very popular topic "Distillation Technology". Dr. P. S. Ramanathan, the founder President of AMIC explained the need for the establishment of AMIC and focused upon the role it can play in the amalgamation of Chemical Engineering profession and Chemistry related activities. Dr. Ramanathan amply illustrated the main objective of continuous sharpening of skills in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering to improve the educational and industrial awareness in the competitive economy.

Professor V. G. Pangarkar, Head, Chemical Engineering Division, UICT, gave the inaugural keynote lecture titled "Distillation- An Art or Science". He dwelt at length on features of Packed and Tray distillation columns. He gave detailed design considerations in the selection of column components/internals such as downcomers, structured and random packings. He also stressed upon the important role of liquid distributors in structured and random packed columns.

The talk on "Structured and Random Packings" by three experts from Sulzer India Limited described the evolution of structured and random packings over the years since 1940’s. They gave the relative importance of various types of packings such as wire gauze, corrugated structured packings like Mellapak, Gempack, etc. Their talk also touched upon the column sizing and comparison of structured verses random packings. They also showed case studies including the retrofitting the old distillation column with newer packings. Notably, they gave an example of Ethyl Benzene/Styrene system where it was shown that the replacement of trays with Mellapak could give higher capacity, better turndown ratio and higher efficiency as compared to the earlier design. Natural gas drying using triethylene glycol was another tested system, according to Mr. B. Balaji of Sulzer India Limited.

Mr. Vishwas Dabholkar from Jacobs H & G illustrated the selection procedure for column internals with advanced trays like superfrac/Minivalve trays, Maxfrac/Bifrac trays, Triton Trays etc. and the relevance of these new tray designs to optimize the tray spacings, perforation size and downcomer/active area distribution. A comparison of high performance trays vis-à-vis structured packings was also deliberated during the seminar. The criteria for selection of internals was elaborated with reference to process features and performance enhancement. The logic of choosing between structured packing and high performance trays for distillation retrofits was explained in lengths with schematic presentation.

Professor K. P. Madhavan, Professor of Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology spoke on role of Instrumentation and Controls in today’s distillation columns. He emphasized on the role of operating variables on column performance. A highly illustrated lecture gave the audience various possible approaches for optimizing the column performance. Measurement of key variables with profit optimization and predictive control model were lucidly explained with control diagrams.

Mr. Raosaheb N. Patil, Managing Director of Technoforce India Ltd. spoke on High Vacuum distillation of Heat sensitive materials. A stepwise procedure to understand the advantages of Agitated Thin Film Evaporator in terms of increased average velocity or reduced residence time, leading to increased heat transfer rates was explained in a simple but effective way. Use of thin film evaporator as a reboiler for separating close boiling liquids and the use of short path distillation were discussed. The need to overcome the pressure drop associated with Agitated Thin Film Evaporator was also discussed. Dr. D. D. Ravetkar, Scientist, NCL, Pune shared his long experience in troubleshooting and design of distillation columns. He is popularly known for his DDR approach - Distillation, Designing and Revamping.

The seminar concluded by Professor R. K. Malik, Head, Chemical Engineering Department, IIT. He summarized the importance of the subject and shared his long experience of troubleshooting the Industrial Distillation columns with the participants.

This month’s website http://www.matche.com/equipcost/index.htm is a nifty little one providing order-of-magnitude costs for a variety of process equipment like pumps, compressors, heat exchangers, tanks and vessels, centrifuges, fired heaters, size reduction and material handling equipment etc. Though the data generated is for US specific conditions, it can still be useful for comparative analysis. It is a shame though that the site has not been updated recently, probably a victim of the dot-com bust. The site is worth visiting for its elegant simplicity alone.

Send your feedback on this and the Newsletter in general to secretary@iichemrc.org. Of course do keep visiting www.iichemrc.org for the MRC news and www.iiche.org.in for the news from the IIChE Headquarters.

Forthcoming Programmes