Web enabling - examples

The traveling chemical engineer problem - Part 2

The CFD specialist continued his work, but was hindered by communication problems: it was difficult to explain his results to the Spanish engineer, as the latter could not follow the progress on a daily basis. Especially the fact that the 3D images of the results were not available to the chemical engineer, retarded the project. Sometimes, decisions had to be made about new configurations to be tested, but this was impossible without the chemical engineer sitting at his side to look at the 3D pictures. So, the chemical engineer had to travel two times more before they found a new configuration that saved 15% energy and would reduce the amount of byproducts considerably. This was 3 months after the start of the project.
"If only this guy would have had is office in the building", complained the CFD specialist to his boss, "we could have done the project in less than a month !"

"You are great !" said the chemical engineer on his fifth visit to Norway. "If these calculations are correct, we can save EUR 600,000 a year !".
"I am glad to hear so" replied the CFD specialist.
At that very moment, the manager of the research institute came in, and they discussed the topic further. They also evaluated the project. Although the chemical engineer was very glad with the results, he complained that he had to travel so many times to Norway, and that communication had been so difficult. "If only you guys had your CFD-system connected to a website", said the chemical engineer, "I could have followed the progress from day to day, without having to travel, and I could have send my comments, or we could have phone calls, both looking at the 3D pictures at the same time".

The manager grabbed a pocket calculator and started to do some calculations. "If we had been able to do the project within a month, and reduce your visits to two, we could have saved EUR 1500 in traveling costs, EUR 400 in hotel costs, and at least one man-week in (EUR 4000) in working hours of our CFD man" announced the manager. "Moreover, you would have had your new reactor design two months earlier, which is equivalent to a saving of EUR 100,000 for the company".

A few days later, they discussed the idea about the project website with the IT-manager of the institute, and decided to call in Computer Chemistry Consultancy.

Jos Aerts from Computer Chemistry Consultancy made them a design which looks like this (simplified):

All the files of the CFD-project are stored in a project database. On a web-server runs an application that manages the database and provides a web-interface to the project members. Each project member, wherever located in the world, can follow the daily advancement in the project. The project website is protected by one or more passwords, so that each member only can retrieve the for him/her relevant information. Who gets which information is decided by the project leader.
As the application is web-enabled, project members only need a web-browser (this can be a thin client of less than $500, EUR 500), from any computer/web-terminal that is connected to the global intranet. Project members can even follow the advancement when traveling, if the web-server is connected to the company's extranet.

Computer Chemistry Consultancy, November 2001