Unlock the rich data in your refinery to achieve Top Quartile performance

While online data from sensors has been available for decades, the low cost and quick installation time of wireless sensors compared to their wired counterparts is driving a new digital transformation in refineries around the world. The data from wireless sensors not only provide real-time measurements and valuable insights into asset health, it can spur new ways to integrate work processes and improve the timeliness and accuracy of decision-making for personnel.

With immediate awareness of what’s happening around the plant, the potential benefits of a good data analytics program speak volumes—no small feat considering that one refiner indicated it produced 80 billion data items for storage in one year from four sites, while another manufacturer referenced a corporate historian with 10 million tags across 15 sites.

Big data translates to big dollars 
McKinsey has ranked Big Data Analytics as one of the top potential technologies that can increase productivity and GDP over the next few years. Among business sectors, manufacturing was the lead with an estimated overall GDP yearly increase of $125 - $250 billion. Bottom line benefits include lowered maintenance costs and energy usage, reduced downtime, and mitigated safety and environmental incidents.

So, what’s standing between refiners and this more digitally connected, data-driven, dollar-rich future? For starters, given the huge volume of data being generated by more sensors and instruments found in the plant, one can imagine it’s simply a steep uphill climb to decide where to begin, whether to store onsite or in the cloud, and how to make sense of what’s being acquired. 

Once refiners have conquered ways to handle this raw data, they must then be able to validate and analyze using the appropriate parameters and alerts to uncover the trends—and account for the anomalies—that will help predict equipment or process failures.

Training staff is critical 
While new technologies are making it easier than ever to get a head start on analyzing this data, refiners will need to also ensure they have properly trained staff that act on the findings and take timely corrective actions as needed.

With challenges outlined, solutions emerge. These include working with an automation solution partner that has the deep industry and technology expertise to understand the refinery’s strategic goals and current situation. It also requires an understanding of the business workflow, operations and maintenance philosophies of the facilities, and the existing roles within the refinery and the need for collaboration between those roles. The emergence of digitization has noticeably increased the need for IT skills, and collaboration with OT is essential.  

                Big Data Analytics is one of the
                top potential technologies that can
                increase productivity and GDP
                over the next few years.

It continues by implementing more of today’s modern automation systems to unlock the value found in advanced process control, statistical monitoring, data quality verification, and more. From there, a control room operator can be presented with not just more data, but more effective information that allows him or her to make the required decisions and actions in a timely manner.

Once a refiner’s finger is on the pulse of the plant, the benefits— and positive returns—will validate the case. Because for all the data and numbers in the world, wouldn’t zero be a nice one to achieve when it comes to safety incidents, excess energy usage, unscheduled downtime, and lost-profit opportunities?