GSE Systems Announces VirtualPlant for Process Industries
GSE Systems Inc. (Columbia, MD), a maker of real-time simulation and process control solutions to the energy, process and manufacturing industries, announced the launch of VirtualPlant.
According to GSE, VirtualPlant develops and delivers business and technology solutions by applying process control, data acquisition and simulation software, systems and services to the research and development, process and manufacturing industries worldwide. GSE's process solutions are used primarily in the pharmaceutical, specialty chemical, and food and beverage industries.
Building on GSE's background in simulation and automation, VirtualPlant is a suite of products and services that can help enable customers to reduce time-to-market, improve overall quality, and improve operating flexibility. According to GSE, VirtualPlant streamlines and optimizes existing processes using consulting services, simulation, recipe management and process control applications.
"By creating a virtual environment for problem solving and business planning, VirtualPlant capitalizes on the potential of simulation to bring fundamentally new types of solutions to process manufacturing and utility markets," says Christopher Carnavos, president of GSE.
The VirtualPlant suite enables users to simulate processes rather than actually performing them. It combines modeling, simulation, controls, training and recipe tracking to help establish and verify process parameters, design and test processing lines and control and develop safety, environmental and QC programs. Additionally, VirtualPlant can help facilitate supplier selection and rapid technology transfer and determine financial feasibility and profitability.
According to Carnavos, users can benefit from VirtualPlant in a variety of ways. As an example, to be successful in the highly competitive food and beverage industry, companies must be able to get new products to market quickly. This requires building a new facility in a timely manner or having flexible plant sites that can manufacture many different products on the same equipment. Both of these methods take precious time, since being the first to market can often mean the difference between success and failure. According to GSE, the VirtualPlant suite of products and services can shorten the time to market by streamlining the process development to production process through simulation and rapid technology transfer of information. Using VirtualPlant components can also facilitate the addition of new recipes to existing plants.