Overview

Harris Group Inc., a leader in the engineering design and consulting business, recognizes that success not only requires experienced engineers and technicians, but tools can save time and streamline operations.

Terry L. Gatlin, P.E., Mechanical Engineer at Harris Group Inc. knows the importance of improving business practices to save time and provide a better solution for the customer.

Terry and his group of engineers had to model a gasoline upgrade to a refinery in Alaska with over 300 nodes and more than a dozen pumps. PIPE-FLO allowed Harris Group to model the entire system in order to find out exactly how it was operating. Using this valuable information

Terry was able to quickly and easily identify the system bottlenecks, saving over 150 engineering hours and paying for the software many times over.

The Challenge

Harris Group Inc. was faced with a very large system in which they had to analyze and identify the system bottlenecks. The traditional spreadsheet approach meant he could only analyze the system in small pieces, focusing on one branch at a time. In a networked system as large as this, Terry felt that it would take entirely too much time and energy to try and locate any sort of system bottleneck using a spreadsheet.

PIPE-FLO's Solution

By using PIPE-FLO, Terry was able to model the system, and focus on even the smallest details in order to identify and isolate the system bottlenecks, in no time at all. The program clearly paid for itself in just the first application.

"PIPE-FLO gave us a tool to simulate and troubleshoot the entire system," said Terry L. Gatlin, P.E., Harris Group Inc. "With this model we recognized a pressure drop problem in the system and generally figured out how the system operated as a whole. Using PIPE-FLO’s simulation view we were able to recognize and avoid a huge problem with the newly installed pumps."

"This application alone paid for the software many times over," said Terry L. Gatlin, P.E., Harris Group Inc. "We were able to find bottlenecks in the system, in no time at all. With the traditional spreadsheet used, we could have never found the bottleneck. The system would have had to be broken down too extensively in order to find the overall problem. Using PIPE-FLO over spreadsheets, I estimate that we saved at least 150 engineering hours in just this application."