Omani graduates take charge of world-class IT system

AFTER spending almost 12 months overseas working on the implementation of cutting-edge
manufacturing technology, four young Omani IT graduates are back in Muscat putting their unique experiences into practice.

These aspiring young men, known as MES Specialists, will play a key role in the successful
implementation of Sohar Aluminium’s Manufacturing Execution System (MES), designed to
provide effective integration of production processes and enterprise business systems at the Sohar Aluminium (SA) smelter in Sohar.

MES provides a layer of communication between business and control and allows the company’s production staff to work within a set of coordinated functionalities for managing and optimizing plant activity during all phases of production.

The team, comprising Omar Al Balushi, Ibrahim Al Kalbani, Khamis Al Senaidi and Faiz Al Jabri, received initial technology training in Italy at the Siemens MES development center and then, earlier this year, joined the MES vendor implementation team at the offices of Capgemini in Grenoble, France, to participate in the implementation of the MES.

Ibrahim Al Kalbani, who holds a Masters of Philosophy (MPhil) in Computation, and a Bachelors of Engineering (BEng) in Software Engineering, from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), UK, commented: “The French experience provided us with valuable international exposure in a world-class, renowned IT company.

“Participating with the implementation teams of Alcan and Capgemini crystallised MES-related skills and was an enjoyable experience both professionally and personally.”

As well as working with Alcan and Capgemini in the use and development of the MES technology, the four also worked with a team of SA Operations ‘key users’ during the MES Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) in France.

In a typical ‘FAT’ scenario, the system would be dismantled and shipped to the customer's site, where it would be reassembled and subjected to what is known as Site Acceptance Tests. It is during the FAT that a customer gets the first hands-on experience with the system.

However, due to the amount of testing required the FAT was conducted in France and, for five continuous weeks, the MES team and the key users conducted more than 1,700 documented tests as well as countless undocumented ones.

“This is a true testament to the time and effort the Operations department put into testing their MES,” Ibrahim said. “Also, the fact that so many tests have been conducted can only be attributed to the working functionalities of the MES and the advanced stage that it is currently in.”

Once installed at Sohar Aluminium, the MES will be integrated with other operations systems such as the Real Time System and SAP. To ensure a successful joining, integration tests with these systems and relevant simulations were also performed.

The technology chosen to implement the MES solution is Siemens SIMATIC IT suite of products, which provides an object-oriented methodology to model the physical plant and all equipment constraints providing for a clear, well structured, and self-documenting approach for implementation of the functionality of the MES.

Sohar Aluminium’s shareholders are Oman Oil Company, Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority, and Alcan. The company was established in September 2004 to construct and operate a single AP35 potline Aluminium smelter with an associated power plant. The smelter is targeted to start its first production of hot metal in 2008.