Making Vital Operational Information Available to Plant Managers

Located in Kenai, Alaska, Agrium KNO
processes natural gas to produce nutrient-rich
fertilizers such as ammonia and urea. The plant’s
processing facilities rely upon an extensive
network of piping that transports the gases
and product from one end of the facility to
another, with up to half a mile between stops.
Accordingly, plant personnel depend on detailed
piping and instrumentation diagrams that allow
them to stay informed.
“We have piping and instrumentation diagrams
that follow all of our piping from different
equipment locations in the plant,” explained
Mike Dunn, the CAD Administrator for Agrium’s
Kenai Nitrogen Operations. “It is imperative that
our plant operators have access to this data for
routine operations, or to troubleshoot problems
in the unlikely event of some type of process upset,
or in planning changes to the current system.”
No other format could properly render the
rich, detailed imagery of the piping and
instrumentation diagrams. “Our diagrams have
a lot of information packed onto them,” said
Dunn. “And they can be anywhere from 33 units
high to 150 units long. If you try zooming in on
a PDF image of that size, the image degrades
and it becomes a blur. You can’t even see it.
We needed a digital format that allows people
to zoom in on the piping and instrumentation
diagrams as much as necessary.”
DWF’s precise, accurate, design format
The solution to Agrium KNO’s challenges lay
with Autodesk DWF. DWF is a format
that was specifically developed to handle
engineering design data. The result is a high
degree of accuracy, fidelity, and data richness,
even when viewing the most detailed of diagrams
Agrium’s Kenai Nitrogen Operations have
converted more than 700 of their piping and
instrumentation diagrams into DWFs. These
important files are readily accessible on the
company’s intranet, where DWF Viewer is
conveniently embedded into Internet Explorer.
As a result, more than 230 Agrium employees—
ranging from plant operators, electricians,
engineers, machinists, and other maintenance
personnel—have instant access to vital
operational information.
The Result
Increasing Operational Efficiency
Agrium KNO’s use of DWF has been an unqualified
success, providing employees with a level
of information access that would not have
been possible with either conventional
paper-based models of distribution or through
competing products.
“DWF is very effective at providing our employees
with the detailed data they require,” stated
Dunn.“DWFs are a cost-effective way to provide
plant personnel with the most current drawing
revisions without any additional printing costs.
Thanks to DWF, they have that information
right at their fingertips versus having to track
down a hard copy print-out. That makes us more
effective at troubleshooting any operational
problems that may arise.”
Additionally, Agrium KNO has been impressed
with DWF’s ability to manage and share information
simply, and without loss of accuracy. “DWF
is without a doubt the best tool for our needs,”
said Dunn. “We create a lot of our designs with
AutoCAD, but converting them to DWF allows
us to share them with a greater number of people
since DWF files are usually about 1/20 the size of
DWG files. Even with the reduced file size,
however, there’s no loss of fidelity with DWF—
when you zoom in on a straight line, it’s still just
a straight line. It doesn’t turn into a blurry,
undefined pixel.”
Moving forward, Agrium KNO has plans to add
even more DWFs to its company intranet.“We’ve
had great success with DWF so far,” said Dunn.
“And we expect to continue using this technology
to our advantage, to make our operations as
efficient as they can be.”
For More Information
To learn more about how Autodesk can help
enhance collaboration though effective information
sharing visit www.autodesk.com/dwf.
To download the free DWF Viewer go to
www.autodesk.com/dwfviewer-download.