Industrial process optimisation

Bring industrial processes to life through animation to make optimisation so much easier

Many processes are developed within Mechanical Flow Diagrams (2D block diagrams), consisting of sequential blocks of text describing start conditions, inputs, activities, and outputs. With the best endeavours and multiple reviews, complex processes can still be difficult to understand and optimise using 2D drawing tools. Animating the same process brings it to life and makes understanding and optimisation so much easier so that bottlenecks can be identified, opportunities for parallel or multi-tasking explored and significant improvements made, all before the process is built, let alone even in operation.

By example, we produced an animation of a filter change operation which must be carried out remotely, in a nuclear environment. We accurately modelled the relevant equipment, and noticed a filter lid park stand, whose sole function is to provide temporary support to a filter lid which had a mass of 99kg. The park stand material was specified as S355 high-strength structural steel, and had an approx. mass of 96kg.

Without going into design detail, there was a large bearing (or contact) area between the two parts, such that a relatively low compressive strength material would be adequate (with significant spare capacity) to support the filter lid. Manufacturing the filter lid park stand from steel (regardless of the grade) would necessitate the use of lifting equipment to move it into place, including the use of lifting eyes, being screwed in for lifting, and then removed prior to operation, by operators in suits and respirators, wearing double gloves, due to the radiological contamination hazard.

We suggested a change of material, to an engineering plastic, such as nylon or polypropylene. These could easily include machined ‘hand-holes’ to enable lifting and carrying, eliminating the need for lifting equipment, and therefore greatly reducing the time to carry out the task, and therefore the radiation dose uptake to the operator.

All of our products and services can utilise your existing 3D CAD models and 2D drawings, equipment manufacturer’s 3D & 2D CAD data, point cloud survey datasets, or be created natively by us, building physically accurate virtual models and digital twins. We utilise ‘game engine’ modelling workflows that ensure that models produced by us are optimised for high quality, no-lag virtual reality experiences.