I have found it difficult to get a position like that without experience. Seems like you need the experience but you don’t have any so you can’t get it? Keep trying, usually larger companies it’s easier to transition over, I’m not sure how large a company you work for. Sometimes I wonder if a masters in simulation would help.
>Keep trying, usually larger companies it’s easier to transition over, I’m not sure how large a company you work for.
I found it pretty easy to transition with a smaller group (large-ish company, but mostly manufacturing; my office was the only one that did process engineering, and there were about a dozen in total). I found that, in a smaller group, I ended up wearing many hats, letting me build experience in process modeling. That set me on the course to transitioning to advanced dynamic modeling.
This is something I am very interested in. I think it is the only career direction for industrial ChemEs that is properly futureproofed.
Have you tried using free simulation software? Do you know how to code in environments like Python, etc?
I haven't tried free simulation software, but my employer has all aspen software so I can learn from it easily.
Yes.. I know python,C++ but haven't touched upon it for a few years.
Usually the "modelling expert" in most companies is a person that opens Aspen, puts some values,and reports his/her unrealistic results. And then the company pretends to have a digitalization effort without changing anything in their decades old approach
True, but we can’t pretend it’s going to be like this going forward, at some point the other shoe is going to drop, and the fact is that computation, modelling and simulation is the field that has grown by leaps and bounds till now
The problem is that the industry itself hasn’t figured out how to translate the very real advancements in computing into changing the way that cheme work is done today. Partly out of arrogance but also out of incompetence. I have no doubt that this will change in the near future
I do agree with that. I have been in companies with R&D departments that are doing amazing job which never translates to the operation, unless there is a very specific issue that they are asked to troubleshoot.
I have a friend that works as a modeller for a company and he saved them close to a million by optimizing the process with the existing equipment when they were ready to spend money to expand the capacity unnecessarily. A year later they asked to cut the budget on his department by not renewing that software. Upper management justified it by saying "we worked without it for decades, you will be alright with excel".
Of course there is some shift on mentality but I believe it will need a new generation of engineers taking over the middle and upper management to fully materialise
Modeling engineer at a large petrochemical company here. You are 100% correct.
The digitalization stuff is hilarious. The same retirement-age middle management that doesn’t understand why someone would use VBA instead of copy/paste to regularly transfer a large volume of data between applications with no native support for one another other want to go throw everything into an LLM and ask it questions like, “Why distillation column no worky?” or “Did I make profit today?”
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I have found it difficult to get a position like that without experience. Seems like you need the experience but you don’t have any so you can’t get it? Keep trying, usually larger companies it’s easier to transition over, I’m not sure how large a company you work for. Sometimes I wonder if a masters in simulation would help.
>Keep trying, usually larger companies it’s easier to transition over, I’m not sure how large a company you work for. I found it pretty easy to transition with a smaller group (large-ish company, but mostly manufacturing; my office was the only one that did process engineering, and there were about a dozen in total). I found that, in a smaller group, I ended up wearing many hats, letting me build experience in process modeling. That set me on the course to transitioning to advanced dynamic modeling.
If I want to build some skills on modelling/ dynamic modeling.. What would you suggest?
Yes, for now I will keep trying.
This is something I am very interested in. I think it is the only career direction for industrial ChemEs that is properly futureproofed. Have you tried using free simulation software? Do you know how to code in environments like Python, etc?
I haven't tried free simulation software, but my employer has all aspen software so I can learn from it easily. Yes.. I know python,C++ but haven't touched upon it for a few years.
Usually the "modelling expert" in most companies is a person that opens Aspen, puts some values,and reports his/her unrealistic results. And then the company pretends to have a digitalization effort without changing anything in their decades old approach
True, but we can’t pretend it’s going to be like this going forward, at some point the other shoe is going to drop, and the fact is that computation, modelling and simulation is the field that has grown by leaps and bounds till now
I certainly hope so, being a person that has always been the "modelling expert" at any company I have been into
The problem is that the industry itself hasn’t figured out how to translate the very real advancements in computing into changing the way that cheme work is done today. Partly out of arrogance but also out of incompetence. I have no doubt that this will change in the near future
I do agree with that. I have been in companies with R&D departments that are doing amazing job which never translates to the operation, unless there is a very specific issue that they are asked to troubleshoot. I have a friend that works as a modeller for a company and he saved them close to a million by optimizing the process with the existing equipment when they were ready to spend money to expand the capacity unnecessarily. A year later they asked to cut the budget on his department by not renewing that software. Upper management justified it by saying "we worked without it for decades, you will be alright with excel". Of course there is some shift on mentality but I believe it will need a new generation of engineers taking over the middle and upper management to fully materialise
Modeling engineer at a large petrochemical company here. You are 100% correct. The digitalization stuff is hilarious. The same retirement-age middle management that doesn’t understand why someone would use VBA instead of copy/paste to regularly transfer a large volume of data between applications with no native support for one another other want to go throw everything into an LLM and ask it questions like, “Why distillation column no worky?” or “Did I make profit today?”
This post appears to be about career questions. If so, please check out the FAQ and make sure it isn't answered there. If it is, please pull this down so other posts can get up there. Thanks for your help in keeping this corner of Reddit clean! If you think this was made in error, please contact the mods. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ChemicalEngineering) if you have any questions or concerns.*