PLM to support hazard identification in chemical plant design

Abstract

A complete plant design is described through an huge amount of data organized in a big number of documents of different types logically linked each other by complex relationships; managing information about plants is a complex and expensive task. The techniques commonly adopted for hazard identification require high costs and time for their development; many specialists in different disciplines need to be involved for all the time necessary to complete the plant documentation analysis. The research project here presented is based on the idea of taking advantage of the organization of the information typically offered by Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems in order to allow designers to evaluate specific plant aspects, in particular those concerning possible hazards. © 2006 Springer.