Simulation process plant efficiency, availability and utilisation as a function of reliability, throughput and operations.

TARO, which stands for Total Asset Reliability and Optimization, is a unique business management tool which enables plant owners and operators to model complex systems and to make informed decisions on the design, operation and maintenance of their asset through quantitative performance analysis. Taro enables raw plant data (e.g. configuration and equipment reliability) to be integrated into a coherent computer simulation model of the plant, i.e. a "virtual plant". This model can then be studied, parameters altered and performance impact assessed to enable optimizations of key performance drivers.

Purpose
Taro has been developed to enable performance forecasting of very complex flow configurations and operational flexibility found in the downstream oil and gas industry. It has a track record of being used for analysing designs of numerous refineries, petrochemical plants and associated supply chain logistics. The main strength of Taro is the ability to handle multiple feedstock and product streams along with complex buffer and operational strategies.

The capabilities of the software can be extended to a wide range of assets, such as:

• Refineries
• Petrochemical complexes
• Gas production and distribution networks
• Utility Production and Distribution networks
• Systems involving product transportation and logistics (shipping, rail, road, pipelines)

Taro - Small flow network in asset view

Benefits
TARO is the most suitable tool for RAM Analysis in the downstream oil and gas industry.

• It is tailored to accommodate the very specific system configurations and operations present in the industry.
• Particular complexities supported are tank level management, flow re-routing, bulk transport operations, changing feedstock and product strategies.
• The development team has a long history of working closely with advanced users, which ensures basic and advanced needs associated with availability analysis in oil and gas operations are met and supported by Taro.

Taro is the most usable tool for Performance Forecasting in the oil and gas industry

• The user interface has flexible ways of defining and manipulating input data to allow the user to focus less on input operations and more on using results to improving the performance of the system
• The study organisation reflects the real world and provides intuitive management of the system under analysis
• The results are presented with a recognised terminology and reports on real world numbers that are easy to understand
  

Taro has great flexibility to handle complex configurations and situations outside the normal scope of system design

• The software has several features that allow the users to reflect situations not initially thought about in ways that seriously challenge the most powerful generic reliability simulation models
• Because of the flow routing possibilities and bulk transport operations in Taro, the process flexibilities relating to the logistics can be assessed and included in the overall reliability analysis.

Taro - Result from stream flow analysis

Key features

• Discrete event driven simulation - a very powerful platform
• Multiple feed stock supply
• Intermediate product streams and routing issues
• Storage volumes – feed, intermediate and product
• Storage tank constraints - inventory level triggered events
• Unit over-capacities - maximum capacity versus normal throughput
• Unit turndown capabilities - minimum flow/slowdowns
• Equipment/Unit reliability
• Maintenance resources and availability of spares
• Unit re-start times - maintenance and process related
• Operating logic - operational flexibility to deal with refinery interruptions
• Conditional Logic - powerful Boolean logic enables most operating scenarios to be modelled
• Bulk transport modelling - constraints of shipping both upstream and downstream of plant
• Highly intuitive graphical user interface - Asset view, Reliability Block Diagram view, Table views and Symbol view
• Equipment catalogue - Build your own custom equipment catalogue for future studies
• Graphical and tabular output
• Production statistics
• Efficiency statistics
• Plant/Unit statistics e.g. performance and availability
• Multi core processing for fast calculation performance
• Batch Run - to run multiple studies using each core of the multi core processor, suitable for Sensitivity Analysis