As business leaders in the oil and gas industry come to terms with the “new normal” of remote working, digital-led interactions, and increased uncertainty, Craig Hayman, CEO at AVEVA discusses how the company is helping teams to navigate the challenges and opportunities that the macro-economic downturn is creating.
As a company focused on accelerating digital transformation, success in a post-COVID-19 world will be about more than connecting the workforce, shifting to IIOT-enabled operating models, and thinking differently, both in terms of scale and how we approach business challenges. To this end, at AVEVA we believe that two transformative opportunities, namely the Cloud and artificial intelligence, known as AI, will change how oil and gas organizations drive successful business outcomes.
AI has been around for more than 30 years, and it’s becoming broader and more sophisticated. This is important because it enables companies to accelerate how they work. With unified smart analytics that span complete data stacks, teams can leverage mathematical thought processes across all their activities. This gives individuals scale and capacity that they would not otherwise have: knowledge, data-led intelligence, the ability to spot opportunities. It enables people to make better decisions, and to use smart systems to recommend courses of action, that enhance the capabilities of the human workforce.
AVEVA’s broad portfolio enables us to infuse AI into our products and portfolios making them smarter, and we’ve been doing this for 15 years in the maintenance and asset performance space with predictive analytics. Today we can also integrate those individual products, connecting the different AI modules together into a broader intelligence using the Cloud.
As we integrate systems, we can use the combined analysis to generate more complex insights and recommendations for the human workforce. This allows teams to do more complex things, and to execute them quickly. Because it is all delivered through the Cloud, we can leverage the breadth of AVEVA’s whole portfolio; the Cloud is the glue and AI is the intelligence that underpins better decisions.
How Can AI Deliver Sustainable Value?
An AVEVA customer in the oil and gas sector is using AI on both rotating and non-rotating equipment and achieved savings of more than £4 million (~$4,333,000 million) in a single catch [because] an operational failure was avoided, thanks to artificial intelligence. Now, we are starting to see AI applied to manufacturing where we are finding that AI-infused MES can boost efficiency and enable teams to identify issues not previously seen with the human eye. For example, using fault diagnostics AI can help identify the fault and use predictive asset strategies to connect the dots and provide mitigation recommendations that keep plants running more efficiently.
Another great example is a company which is using next-gen predictive maintenance to leverage AI-driven simulation and forecasting to get a 360-degree view of risk and improve decision-making throughout operations. Once an issue is identified with predictive maintenance, the team can ask: can we make it to the next planned outage, or do we need to schedule an emergency maintenance shutdown? During the forecasted remaining useful life of an asset, when is the optimal time to perform maintenance in order to minimize adverse impacts on operations and associated costs? What is the likely impact of a particular outage and what prescriptive actions should we pre-emptively take to mitigate it? This next-gen technology is transforming how the team can produce energy and deliver to customers, driving efficiency and sustainability.
In the past we had narrow AI, which was infused into various products, and now we can use the Cloud to leverage AI that spans the whole portfolio. This broader AI is the first step toward AI general intelligence – the ability to make a complex decision using different types of AI, the ability to learn something and apply it in another situation. This is a continuum, and it’s exciting to see the progress already being made. With the shift to digital business models following COVID-19, we see this trend accelerating, and we’re already working with customers across the globe to make that happen.
For more information on AVEVA’s AI portfolio, visit: www.aveva.com/en/solutions/digital-transformation.
Headline photo courtesy of AVEVA
Craig Hayman joined AVEVA in February 2018 as chief executive officer. Previously he was chief operating officer at PTC Inc., where he had responsibility for engineering, marketing and sales. He also served as president of the Solutions Group. At PTC, Hayman returned the digital engineering business to growth, revitalized the partner network, and successfully introduced a new generation of Industry 4.0 connected manufacturing applications. Prior to joining PTC, he was president of eBay's enterprise business and served more than 15 years in senior leadership positions at IBM. Hayman holds a BSc. in computer science and electronics from the University of London.
- Craig Haymanhttps://energiesmedia.com/author/craig-hayman/
- Craig Haymanhttps://energiesmedia.com/author/craig-hayman/
Oil and gas operations are commonly found in remote locations far from company headquarters. Now, it's possible to monitor pump operations, collate and analyze seismic data, and track employees around the world from almost anywhere. Whether employees are in the office or in the field, the internet and related applications enable a greater multidirectional flow of information – and control – than ever before.