YUFENG LIU

Act as site automation lead to support the project team deliver the automation systems for the greenfield project, including but not limited to Process Automation System (DeltaV, PLC), BMS/EMS, AGV, OSI PI and Site Infrastructure such as OT network.

• Review, comment and approve the project design of the systems.
• Establish the automation team to engage from the Basic Design stage and build up the knowledge to prepare for operation phase.
• Promote knowledge-sharing across teams by creating documentation detailing best practices for operating newly implemented automated systems effectively.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams for the successful integration of automation technologies into existing workflows.
• Champion a culture of innovation within the organization, encouraging team members to explore new ideas for leveraging automation technologies in their daily work.

Act as automation lead to manage a team of 11 automation engineers to ensure automation readiness for new plant start up.

• Setup Automation Goals and Objectives
• Prepare Automation Readiness Schedule to align with overall start up plan and participate in Tier meetings to identify the interdependency across different departments
• Lead the team to prepare SOPs, setup various digital systems such as OSI PI, MES etc.
• Coordinate with Emerson to prepare the automation training to around 80 end users and setup Automation JTC.
• Represent automation to establish Alarm management strategy and deliver automation solution.
• Establish the process flow to build up the knowledge from project team

Routine Activity (Yokogawa DCS):

• Provide maintenance of the process control systems to identify and address the software/hardware issues to ensure the business continuity
• Provide the automation solutions in the meeting with cross-functional teams to improve the productivity, and meet safety and quality compliance requirements
• Support the audit activities to provide automation perspective answers and the follow up CAPA actions
• Support automation manager to train and develop junior automation engineers in terms of technical and project management knowledge
• Lead several capital projects for new product introduction as well as the system upgrading with the depth knowledge of System Development Life Cycle

Capital Project Experience:

• New Product Introduction (Yokogawa DCS)

Participate in the project meeting to understand user requirements from different stakeholders and provide automation solutions which help to enhance the operation, safety and quality with robust design. Lead and provide guidance to junior automation engineers to develop the software design and prepare the demonstration to the end user for feedback. Prepare the validation documents such as test plans or qualification protocols based on GMP standard before realizing for production.

• Site Improvement Projects (Yokogawa DCS):

As part of the cross-functional team member to identify the opportunity which can help to improve the productivity, safety, quality and data integrity. Several examples as below:

- Designed new process which can automate the transfer of slurry from one reactor to two centrifuges simultaneously which helped to reduce the cycle time by half.

- Designed the in-process monitoring sequence to monitor the critical parameter deviation or abnormal scenarios which provides a real time alert to operation and helps QA to reduce the batch release review time with electrical data to meet the data integrity requirements.

- From safety perspective, I designed a prototype for process safety requirements with the interlock and notification feature. After the first batch of implementation went live successfully, I guided the junior automation engineers to adapt the prototype to site wide equipment.

- Some other projects also helped to save the plant running cost to meet the KPI by automating the operation of high power utility systems.

• System Upgrading/Migration (Yokogawa DCS)

I had experience in successfully leading two major system upgrading as a project lead. The upgrading is to mitigate the obsolescence risks by upgrading the software (both OS and Application) and hardware (Controllers and IO terminations including barriers/relays). I led the project team, from initial phase, to identify the requirements, timeline/costing and qualification/execution plan, to the design phase with detail design review and test phase for FAT and SAT, finally released the system to production for run and operation on time. All the project deliverables were properly generated and maintained for future reference.

• Yokogawa DCS Migrated to DeltaV Project

- Act as automation lead to migrate Yokogawa DCS to Emerson DeltaV.

- Supported the project manager to identify the scope, timeline and costing for this project.

- Guide Emerson to understand the existing configuration and functions, review the hardware and software design proposed by Emerson to ensure the migrated functions are working as per required.

- Generated the enhancement list together with the operation and process team to make use this opportunity for robust, standardized and efficient design.

I have gained the in-depth knowledge of DeltaV system while involving in the detail design on top of the basic training from Emerson with the certification.