TAR 2018: Europe's largest conference for turnarounds, plant shutdowns and revisions

Like actual operating phases, phases of downtime - also known as "turnarounds" - are part of the life cycle of large industrial plants. These are usually extremely complex projects that require high levels of coordination effort. Costs and deadlines must be considered, along with occupational safety, environmental protection and diverse statutory requirements. In industrial plants, turnarounds are often the most important individual projects with the largest added value share. The implementation of such a project therefore requires professional project management, which aims to complete a usually very high number of work packages in the shortest possible time-frame - because time is the key factor: For example, a six-week shutdown of a fully continuous plant can reduce total availability by more than ten percent over a project year.

Specialists and executives from the plant industry will meet at the TAR 2018 in Potsdam to discuss all aspects of modern shutdown management over a total of three days. The symposium offers a comprehensive and also diverse program: From compact shutdowns to mega-turnarounds, well-known industrial companies will demonstrate how they optimize their plant shutdowns, which approaches they follow in the traditional focal areas of shutdown preparation, planning and implementation, and also how they address infrastructure challenges. In addition to interactive forums with keynote speeches and discussions, there are parallel tracks on current topics such as occupational safety and contractor management on the agenda. In a high-level panel discussion on digital turnarounds, visitors will also learn how experts see current developments in the field in terms of visions for the future versus the actual situation now.

Digital transformation is also one of the thematic pillars of the entire conference and the focus of the presentations by COSMO CONSULT. "With the possibilities offered by digital technologies today, a completely new era in turnaround management is beginning," says Udo Ramin, managing director of COSMO CONSULT’s Magdeburg Innovation Center. As an expert for “Industry 4.0”, as the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies is known in Germany, he will present new ideas, technologies and concrete solutions for digital turnarounds and the associated potential for improving economic efficiency at the TAR 2018 using many real-life examples. The focus will be on the award-winning COSMO CONSULT “Industry 4.0” solution scenario developed jointly with technology partners Bosch, telent-euromicron, Dräger, Autodesk and Microsoft and on the "Digital Construction Site" concept developed by Fraunhofer IFF. This focuses on mobile and cloud-based solutions and the latest IoT and VR technologies to minimize unproductive periods on-site and significantly reduce downtime. "The potential of our vision for a “smart industrial park” is enormous, and we're just getting started. We already have very efficient solutions that have proven themselves in practical use," says Udo Ramin.

"Digital turnarounds are a game changer in the field of large-scale shutdowns," says Uwe Bergmann, CEO of the COSMO CONSULT Group. “The more complex the project, the clearer the impact of the strengths of digital tools, including the networking of all processes involved, the ability to process enormous amounts of data and the time saved through automation.” The decisive factor is a comprehensive infrastructure that brings everything together - such as COSMO CONSULT's digital system platform, which is based on the latest Microsoft technology and links all involved project-related and commercial processes in an end-to-end solution, he added. "Good planning is still the key to an efficient execution phase, but it is impossible to imagine planning and managing future shutdown projects without digital platform technologies."

The 14th annual TAR conference on turnarounds, plant shutdowns and revisions will take place on 24 and 25 January 2018 at the Dorint Hotel Sanssouci in Potsdam. On January 23, the day before the conference opens, COSMO CONSULT will conduct the intensive workshop on "Industry 4.0 - Digital Construction Site" led by Udo Ramin, managing director of COSMO CONSULT TIC. Interested parties can register on the event page of the TAR 2018 or arrange an individual meeting directly with COSMO CONSULT.