The technical evaluation of the project started in July last year, with Automind as a participant, as well as other players national and international supply of automation systems for terminals.

The technical evaluation process was led by Ricardo Andrade, Petrobahia's PP&D Manager. “Since it is a large investment for Petrobahia, we dedicate the necessary time to a technical evaluation of the products on the market. We decided not to be in a hurry at this stage of the process, identifying in a quantitative and qualitative way the fulfillment of our requirements”, pointed out Ricardo Andrade.

“We knew that no product on the market would completely meet our expectations. It would be necessary to carry out customizations to comply with all the business rules demanded in our process meetings, however, it would not be economically viable to acquire a system of this nature. We were looking for consolidated solutions with a solid installed base. A product that met most of our requirements with native functionalities and that had the flexibility to perform customizations”, continued Ricardo Andrade.

The best solution was presented by Automind and culminated in the acquisition of Autoload^® by Petrobahia, more specifically the scheduling, access control, queue control, loading and unloading, pump and inventory control modules, in addition to a customization package to meet ten specific business rules.

“The time dedicated by Petrobahia in the technical evaluation process contributed a lot to the clear definition of the scope to be offered. As the three bases were included in the evaluation process, meeting the requirements will allow all to have a single version of Autoload^®, even with customizations, directly and positively impacting system implementation costs, which made our offer more competitive”, commented Automind's Business Director, Adriano Macário.

The Autoload Deployment Deadline^® in the three bases it is 240 calendar days, with a forecast to end in December of this year.

With the addition of the communication driver for the AccuLoad IV, AutoLoad® offers its customers the possibility of integrating eight preset models from different manufacturers. In addition to AccuLoad IV, we have AccuLoad III, AccuLoad III.net and MicroLoad from TechnipFMC, Fusion4 MSC-L from Honeywell, Danload-6000 and DL-8000 from Emerson and TCC from Unidata.

In addition to electronic flow predeterminers, AutoLoad® has communication drivers for various field devices such as road scales, access control units, electronic panels, PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers), URVs (Vapor Recovery Units) and odorization, in addition to interfacing with telemetry systems for tanks and motorized valves, firefighting systems and the main corporate systems on the market.

“Automind's positioning is that of a company that provides Integrated Automation Technology Solutions, on a turnkey basis, consisting of services, software and equipment, covering the stages of conception, implementation and maintenance. For the logistics segment, we offer our TMS (Terminal Management System), AutoLoad®. We constantly seek to update AutoLoad®, including new features demanded by the market and the integration of new control devices for terminals, mainly electronic flow predeterminers, providing our customers with flexibility in choosing equipment to control their process”, commented the Director of Business at Automind, Adriano Macário.

AutoLoad® is installed or in the process of being installed in more than 50 terminals in Latin America.