Can you please elaborate on what is the strategic mission of AVEVA for the downstream industry?
AVEVA’s mission is to be a trusted digital transformation partner to the downstream industry. As we connect people with processes and technology, we deliver comprehensive value chain solutions for the downstream industry.
AVEVA works with a global partner network that is focused on the complete digital acceleration journey. Our company is uniquely focused on digital transformation in plant engineering, procurement, construction, and operation, and we are trusted by the world’s leading integrated, national and independent refiners and petrochemicals corporations, with over 200 refineries and most of the world’s petrochemical cracking furnaces as an installed base.
AVEVA is claiming to have vast expertise in oil and gas industry on managing capital asset projects. Can you please explain how does your organisation achieve this?
Today’s evolving landscape in the oil and gas industry demands a new way of executing capital projects. A unified, integrated, data-centric system is the need of the hour, one that holds information in a single place and helps customers handle change seamlessly and automatically.
AVEVA’s EPC 4.0 strategy assists customers to collaborate on a global scale, digitally and on a unified platform. The entire process can be traced, tracked, and linked, right from engineering and design, through procurement and construction, to handover and even to operations and maintenance. This can be used as the foundation for a Digital Twin of the operating plant. Besides operational efficiencies, implementing AVEVA’s EPC 4.0 strategy and executing and managing a capital project on a data-centric platform also leads to substantial cost savings. AVEVA solutions include integrated process design, simulation, engineering, procurement, construction, and handover processes – meeting customers’ end-to-end requirements.
This way, AVEVA effectively empowers downstream customers to manage capital asset projects digitally and accelerate their capital project delivery.
When we look at the history of the downstream industry, OT used to be the core of the industry. At a later stage, IT solutions came into the centre stage of the industry. And now, there is convergence of OT and IT. Can you please explain what are the respective roles of OT and IT, separately as well as together, in the downstream industry now?
When it comes to business agility and optimising operations for the downstream industry, information silos can be one of the biggest obstacles to delivering profitability. These organisations generate large volumes of data every day. However, with siloed IT and OT systems, their teams do not have full visibility to the data that drives real-time decisions, and ultimately drives their business. Operational inefficiencies make it difficult to align processes, or collaborate effectively, which may eventually lead to frustrated teams and reduced profit margins.
What AVEVA provides the downstream industry is the way to capture that data and provide them the ability to visualise their business, where they can make informed critical decisions and adjustments that directly impact their bottom line. The real value lies in the improved integration and collaboration across functional departments, enabling the sharing of information and coordination of daily activities and processes.
AVEVA’s Unified Operations Center (UOC), which is based on a ‘Systems of Systems’ approach, converges both IT and OT data from HMI/SCADA, analytics, cameras, GIS maps, ERP systems, engineering diagrams and more. This provides the foundation for real-time operational performance management, providing enterprise-wide visibility to optimise assets and operations.
How do your solutions ensure that refining and petrochemical industry organisations run safer, greener, longer and faster?
Over the last few years, AVEVA has brought together rich capabilities across the asset lifecycle and the operational value chain. The AVEVA portfolio offers market leading capabilities to deliver capital projects on time and on budget, to monitor and control complex operations in real-time, to ensure the reliability of assets and drive optimal performance across the value chain.
We are helping industries digitise to unlock sustainability. We work with our customers and harness the power of our ecosystem to deliver solutions and expertise to optimise engineering, operations and performance. Our solutions help the refining and petrochemical industry to transform opportunity into business value.
Where has the downstream industry reached in actual digital transformation?
Digital transformation is a continuous and evolving journey. We are definitely observing increasing market demand for digital solutions in the region.
Industrial organisations are opting for cloud, digital twin, AI and automation technologies to address the complexities of today’s challenging macro-economic environment. The current pandemic has forced them to accelerate their digitalisation initiatives to facilitate a way of working that keeps both people connected and agile, and more importantly, safe.
We are expecting to see these digital demands to continue over the next few years especially as regional oil producers are increasing their investments in the downstream sector. According to reports, more than $200bn is expected to be invested into new refining and petrochemical ventures in the GCC by 2025. The Gas Investments Outlook 2019-2023 report predicts that the UAE and Qatar specifically will see an increase in their downstream gas investments.
At AVEVA, we are doubling down on key technology trends such as Real-Time Optimisation to improve efficiency of operations, optimise throughput and maximise profit, Predictive Maintenance to improve plant performance and reduce maintenance costs, and enterprise visibility with a Unified Operations Center.
