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Reference Architecture for the Chemical and Oil Refining Industries

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MICROSOFT CHEMICAL REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE
The Microsoft Chemical Reference Architecture (ChemRA) initiative was launched to develop an information technology (IT) reference architecture that will provide chemical manufacturers and oil & gas refiners with a common, flexible IT environment for technology and data integration and interoperability along the entire value chain.
ChemRA is based on a set of guiding principles (derived from industry standards and technology advancements) that support the most common use cases of technology in the chemical and oil refining industries.
Initiated by Microsoft and being led by Microsoft and several of our key industry partners, ChemRA is enabling partners and customers with multiple technologies to work together efficiently, integrating business applications, processes, people and data to facilitate more consistent workflows and collaboration, within and across organizations in the chemical and oil refining ecosystems.
 
Why ChemRA?
ChemRA is Microsoft's response to the economic and business challenges that are making it crucial for chemical and refining companies to find new efficiencies for managing their operations and their business. Examples of challenges that these businesses face include:
  • Complex global supply chains
  • Increased and dynamic regulatory requirements
  • Rising costs of feedstock and energy
  • Mergers and acquisitions that result in disparate, disconnected computer systems
 
One way to tackle these challenges is to leverage new developments and trends in technology to establish a unified IT architecture and guiding principles that can support chemical and refining enterprise architectures and domain operations—ultimately helping these businesses to achieve new efficiencies, be more competitive, and potentially realize new value in a complex global economy.
 
Goals
The ChemRA initiative has three key goals:
  • Lower the total cost of ownership and increase the agility and longevity of chemical business solutions by ensuring faster development and deployment, easier integration, and interoperability—speeding time to market and return on investment (ROI).
  • Provide a development and delivery framework that drives deeper, richer commonality within the customer environment by adherence to common principles—benefiting both solution providers and in-house development projects.
  • Accelerate delivery of industry solutions built on a common IT reference architecture to help meet evolving industry challenges.
 
Main Principles
ChemRA will help to holistically address technology integration throughout the chemical and oil refining industry ecosystem. ChemRA is based on the following set of principles that support the most common use cases of technology in the industries:
  • Natural user experience – interacting with technology in more humanly intuitive ways.
  • Application interoperability – facilitating cross-application business processes and extending them beyond enterprise walls to business partners, suppliers, and customers.
  • Enhanced collaboration – using unified communication tools, including portals, email, alerts, social computing and cloud computing, within the context of operations and business workflows.
  • Business insights - monitoring operations to quickly identify, resolve, or even prevent problems.
  • Solid infrastructure – Secure, reliable, flexible, scalable, and high performing technology foundation to support 24/7, global operations and business.
 
To date, six of Microsoft’s industry partners have signed on to the initiative and agreed on the principles and guidelines of the reference architecture. Launch partners include: Accenture, AspenTech, Invensys Operations Management, OSIsoft, PROS, and Siemens (Industrial Automation Systems, MES).
Over time, the group will continue to work together to further define, implement, and commercialize the reference architecture and through individual product offerings.
 
Key Benefits
  • ChemRA will guide manufacturers in improving their businesses by helping them to:
    • Innovate faster, improve agility, develop new capabilities
    • Engage customers throughout the idea-to-consumption lifecycle
    • Maximize value from IT
  • ChemRA will guide partners to deliver more value in less time through:
    • Solutions aligned with architecture to deliver the best joint value
    • Clarity on technical capabilities and implementation approaches
    • Roadmap for technology adoption and migration approaches
 
More Information, Next Steps
The ChemRA Initiative is an excellent example of our continuing commitment to address the most critical business challenges in the global process manufacturing industry today. Microsoft is a process industry catalyst, bringing together technology innovation, a rich partner ecosystem, and deep industry knowledge.
 
For more information on how to realize benefits from ChemRA, please see the white papers available for download on this page or contact us at chemra@microsoft.com.

Rollover logos to read more information about our partners.

  • Accenture logo

    Accenture

    Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 223,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010.

    www.accenture.com

    Learn more on how it relates to ChemRA

  • AspenTech logo

    AspenTech

    AspenTech is a leading supplier of software that optimizes process manufacturing. From its roots at MIT to the groundbreaking release of aspenONE V7, AspenTech has always been at the forefront of innovation in the process industries. With integrated aspenONE solutions, process manufacturers can implement best practices for optimizing their engineering, manufacturing, and supply chains. As a result, AspenTech customers are better able to achieve their operational excellence goals — increasing capacity, improving margins, reducing costs, and becoming more energy efficient.

    www.aspentech.com

    Learn more on how it relates to ChemRA (document)

    Learn more on how it relates to ChemRA (video)

  • Invensys logo

    Invensys

    Invensys Operations Management offers the most holistic and cost-effective way to optimize the business impact of your operation's performance and overall profitability. We help improve the performance of your key resources (people, equipment, energy and materials) in real time — with dramatic, measurable results — using a collaborative and open approach.

    www.iom.invensys.com

    Learn more on how it relates to ChemRA (document)

    Learn more on how it relates to ChemRA (video)

  • OSIsoft logo

    OSIsoft

    OSIsoft delivers the PI System, the industry standard in enterprise infrastructure, for management of real-time data and events. With installations in 110 countries spanning the globe, the OSIsoft PI System is used in manufacturing, energy, utilities, life sciences, data centers, facilities, and the process industries. This global installed base relies upon the OSIsoft PI System to safeguard data and deliver enterprise-wide visibility into operational, manufacturing and business data.

    www.osisoft.com

    Learn more on how it relates to ChemRA (video)

  • PROS logo

    PROS

    PROS Holdings, Inc. is a leading provider of prescriptive enterprise pricing and revenue management software products, specializing in price analytics, price execution, and price optimization. By using PROS' software products, companies gain insight into their pricing strategies, identify pricing-based profit leaks, optimize their pricing decision making and improve their business processes and financial performance.

    www.prospricing.com

  • Siemens logo

    Siemens

    Siemens offers the perfect, tailor-made system to access all of your real-time process information companywide. Our manufacturing execution system, SIMATIC IT, is a sophisticated, highly scalable MES that conforms to the ISA S95 standard. Our manufacturing execution system delivers multiple capabilities and enables optimum utilization with high production quality at lower cost.

    Siemens MES

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