Industry: Energy Technology Region: Italy Transaction Price: USD 1 million Transaction Method: Equity Financing
Description of Requirement:
An Italian SME working in the energy sector since 1986 provides software to refineries. The software supports a variety of supply chain planning tasks, from raw material characterization and selection to planning and scheduling operations. The tool is user-friendly and can apply simulation and optimization techniques. The company finds users based on licensing agreements and agents to bring the product to new markets. Also seeking joint venture partners.
details:
Since the mid 80's, an Italian company specializing in services for the energy industry provides consulting services and software for downstream oil. Soon, they began to develop software tools to support their consulting activities to model service delivery. The system provides the technical capabilities required to properly represent the supply chain.
Developed entirely in-house, the system consists of modules that support every aspect of the refining system, enabling accurate short-, medium- and long-term planning. Modules can be used individually or in combination to implement custom client solutions. A detailed database of raw material properties enables embedded plant simulation models to calculate the yield and quality of intermediate products in process units.
The company is interested in finding users who want to use the proposed product directly to optimize their production cycle or provide new services to its customers under the license agreement.
Commercial agency agreements are also being sought to introduce the software into new foreign markets.
Joint venture partners are also being considered for a new joint venture to further customize products and supply them abroad.
Compared with the tools currently available on the market, the proposed solution has some important innovations. Such as the following:
-Logistics simulation: the studied simulation algorithm processes instructions (source and destination tank selection criteria for each transfer), speeds up the development of scheduling plans (from hours to minutes) and highly simplifies the scheduling process;
- Tracking of characterization data: the system enables rough characterization even from a small number of data to which proprietary data mining methods are applied; data processing methods check the consistency of coarsely analyzed data;
- Strategic Planning: Functionality allows the tool to support the execution of feasibility studies (plant library cost estimation and implementation functions, calculation systems, process technology selection).
The tool also represents an integrated solution: a suite that handles rough characterization, strategic planning, general planning and short-term operational planning.
Regarding the advantages, the relevant ones are as follows:
- User-friendly system: new users can easily master and update the software; the system is intuitive and geared towards oil people;
- Availability of plant simulation models: calculations can be more complex because they are not delegated to solvers, making model results reliable;
- Optimized scheduling: the tool provides functionality to test the practical feasibility of generating plans for "economically driven" scheduling solutions;
- Cost-effective: The system reduces the need for training and model building resources.