news and
press releases

Recklinghausen, January 15th, 2016, At the beginning of October in Duisburg the Duisburg-Essen University held the opening session for a project titled “Support for Multi-Disciplinary Engineering Processes in the Construction of Power Stations” (UMEK). The goal of the project is to connect existing knowledge and solution islands that exist in the individual subsections in the construction of power stations as well in the individual phases of system engineering in complete systems.

As a specialist in data management, process engineering and information management in the technical environment keytech is taking part in this project as a cooperation partner and to help discover new standards for the construction of power stations.

The engineering field rarely faces a challenge as big as the one they see in the construction of power stations. As many different areas work in the construction of power stations from plant layout to basic and detailed engineering, to construction and assembly in complex phased system engineering of complete systems and power station components, there are, in reality, often knowledge and solution islands that can lead to friction losses and errors. These issues though should not be overlooked with the desire for energy transition, the increased use of renewable energy and the consequent requirement for more flexibility of the base and medium load power plants.

The team led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Köhler in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Duisburg-Essen, probably thought this as they went on the search for suitable project partners for the project "Support for multi-disciplinary engineering processes in the constructions of power stations."

The project aims to connect the aforementioned knowledge and solution Islands and to develop integrated approaches and methods for the different areas to enable knowledge-based and cooperative development, design and planning processes on the software and data level.  The project refers to the 6th Energy Research Program "Research for an environmentally friendly, reliable and affordable energy supply" of the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, which is also providing part of the funding for the project.

In addition to the Institute IPE CAE from the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the Tapprogge Ges.mbH from Wetter and the CAD Schroer GmbH from Moers, keytech Software GmbH, as an expert on data management and software-based process support, is also part of the cooperation community that is running the project.  The project is scheduled to last three years and is funded in part by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy who are giving 2.7 million euros. 700,000 Euro of which is being given by keytech.

keytech’s contribution to UMEK will focus primarily on the strengths and core competencies of the company, explains project leader Dr. Alfred Heimsoth. The software manufacturer from the Ruhr will contribute greatly to the project with its expertise in project, data and document management. Key issues in these areas will be the protection and visualization of the documentation and the corresponding data and database models. A clear focus will also lie in the areas of process modeling. "Here we can bring our strengths in the areas of workflow support, release and visualization," said Dr. Alfred Heimsoth.

The use of web technologies such as keytech web suite will also play a role in information retrieval.
With their participation in this project keytech is helping ensure that safe and sustainable concepts for the future energy supply arise. With a planned project duration of three years, we will certainly have the opportunity to report on this project again in the coming months.