Articles & Blogs

Meptagon, an Engineering, Procurement, Fabrication, and Construction (EPFC) company with over 60 years of experience fabricating and installing complex plants for its customers, faced a challenge with data integration.  

The company wanted to adopt digital transformation with an end-to-end integrated process that would eliminate the use of Excel and unintelligent drawings wherever possible. By eliminating siloes of data between engineering, design, and fabrication, Meptagon would also improve work processes, saving time.  

For that, they needed a solution that would benefit their own business and the customers. The ideal solution it sought would enable parallel work so that all stakeholders involved would become more efficient and productive in executing projects, allowing the plants to be built more quickly helping to accelerate the customer’s time to market.   

These goals were tested when Meptagon received a contract to help build a new mega fabrication plant for a major semiconductor manufacturer in Israel.  

The Challenges  

The new mega fabrication plant includes multiple manufacturing processes executed by specialized automated machine tools. Each tool is the double-decker bus size, and the install locations for the tools vary across the facility. A major challenge to consider during design was that several tools needed to be lowered into openings in the floor, 6 meters above the sub-floor. Once in place, each tool is connected to hundreds of precision-engineered waters, electrical, vacuum, air, gas, liquids inlets, and outlets.   

Meptagon would install the new piping onsite only after the tool was in place during previous projects. Piping had to be laid under the machine, which was challenging and time-consuming because of limited space, working at heights of 6 meters (approximately 20 feet) under the manufacturing floor, and due to the stringent cleanroom conditions of the site. Because of these circumstances, work at the site needed to be minimized wherever and whenever possible. Any contamination of the manufacturing environment had to be avoided, so production of the microchips was unaffected. Cleanroom conditions are also notoriously cramped, often with only a few centimeters of space between pipes, ducts, and raceways. It demanded greater as-built recording and more accurate design.  

Working With Hexagon  

After carefully considering all the issues and trying other solutions, Meptagon finally chose Hexagon’s CADWorx Plant Professional, which helped them with multiple vital benefits:  

• Significant time and cost savings by accelerating project schedules and delivery   

• Improved quality of deliverables  

• Simple-to-use tools allow process engineers to be more productive, sooner, and more effectively   

In addition, during the COVID-19 pandemic, flexible cloud-based licensing used to administer access to CADWorx Plant Professional allowed designers and engineers to work from home and share documentation via Cloud platforms, enabling collaboration by their design teams in different countries.   

Being used to minimizing time spent on site and having digital access to tools and data proved a valuable way to overcome COVID-19 restrictions. The ability to design and fabricate remotely was critical to preparing the necessary pipework for rapid installation, even as the tool was still fabricated off-site.  

Achieving Great Results Together  

After digitizing the processes, Meptagon continues to use CADWorx Plant Professional, which helped reduce workforce requirements by 75% for clean-room environments. The ability to accurately model every aspect of the plant before construction also helps shorten the project schedule – because there is no need to wait for the tools to arrive, piping and electrical installation are ready to be connected as soon as the tool arrives onsite. The solution also helps the company receive more benefits:  ​

• Better design reviews and decision-making  

• Review, amend, and agree on deliverables in advance  

• Ability to view models with augmented reality (AR) goggles for simulated walk-throughs  

• Accurate made-to-order fabrication  

• Automated fabrication spool drawing creation and BoMs from the CADWorx models  

Besides, Meptagon combines CADWorx tools with Hexagon Geosystems’ laser scanning hardware to quickly perform a laser scan of the complete facility, with 3D models and P&ID diagrams easily validated against the laser scans.  

“We continue to use CADWorx Plant Professional in all of our engineering projects. We can’t imagine going back to working in a non-digitalized modeling and fabrication process.”, said Eyal Leshem, Vice President Systems & Engineering at Meptagon  

With the ability to plan and execute piping fabrication parallel to the owner operator’s tooling installation, Meptagon can significantly accelerate construction projects for its clients. Digitized designs also offer the potential to work with third parties, allowing Meptagon to participate in more projects simultaneously, boosting its revenue and competitiveness.  

You can read the complete case study here to learn more about what Meptagon achieved with Hexagon solutions.