Digitalization: Assuring Your Plant Achieves Its Full Potential1

Presenting the results from the digitalization proof of concept that commenced late 2017 at a leading US refinery.

The proof of concept has used cloud technology to bring together data, leading rigorous simulation, latest generation analytics and global subject matter experts. With the aim of assuring that the unit maintains its full potential; multi-million dollars’ worth of opportunities have been identified to date.

Plants understand the value of rigorous simulation, but most simulators are not an up to date representation of the plant or do not connect to historian for their “As-Is” data. Therefore, plant staff spend valuable hours in reconciling simulations versus actual versus planning and manually updating reports, calculations, KPIs, etc. from simulation re-runs. Consequently, investigation of plant excursions can be slow and result in delaying corrective actions.

Latest tools in digitalization has allowed the integration of data and simulation systems to create a plant digital twin that automatically updates as plant values changes. This allows for an accurate representation of the asset over its full range of operation and to capture the full history and future of the asset. In addition, SMEs supporting the local process engineers proactively troubleshoot the unit’s bottlenecks and continuously offer knowledge transfer. The result is a centralized single version of the truth, used by everyone, outputs delivered directly to the business, strong governance systems and a unit that runs at maximum economical potential.

The presentation will detail the study methodology and describe the collaborative digital solutions that connects the refinery to the industry’s global talent. Such as:

• Plant data and unit economics through a Digital Mirror
• Continuously rating unit performances with real time reconciled data and a cloud-based unit model
• ‘Bad’ data avoidance with educated analytic conditioning alongside determination of instrumentation or process problems
• Planning model’s validity checks against the changing operating window
• Current profitability and gap to best economic potential dashboards
• Expert recommendations and stewardship actions to close economic gap

The paper concludes with a critical examination of the learning from the study implementation and how the traditional work processes of the leading refinery adapted to the digitalization in order to achieve the increase in profitability.