Today’s process plants face increasing challenges in personnel, technology and management organization. To remain profitable—or even viable—companies must address all of these areas. One method that can help is integrated operations (iOps).

People

In the past, plant personnel had to live close to their jobs. Every part of plant operations was located at the plant site except perhaps for sales, marketing and executive management. People today want to work where they live but not necessarily where the “job” really is. Where the job is could be dangerous, dirty, distant and, frankly, the location could be just plain dull. This can make it difficult to attract new qualified workers.

And while new workers may be in short supply, experienced employees—the ones with the deep knowledge of how a plant or process actually works—are moving into retirement and taking their vital knowledge with them.

Keeping up with technology

Processes have become increasingly complex and often require expert knowledge to manage—expert knowledge that may be available only part of the time or from people located in another facility in another state or even another part of the world.

At the same time, the amount of data flowing into today’s control systems threatens to bury operators in alarms and maintenance personnel in work orders. Some way must be found to handle this flood and turn it into actionable information.

Organizational barriers

After years of operation, companies tend to solidify into individual bureaucratic fiefdoms, each concerned primarily with its own objectives, procedures and rules, spending too much time resisting encroachments by other departments and paying little attention to the overall objectives of the organization. Information tends to be compartmentalized into silos, with little interchange among different groups.

Success through integrated operations

What can be done to make information flow more freely among individuals, locations and departments? How can collaboration be fostered at all levels? A good part of the solution can be found in iOps. The term originated in the petroleum industry, where it referred to the movement of operations, maintenance and production functions from offshore platforms that were connected by broadband links for videoconferencing and data sharing to iOps command centers on shore. The Center for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry (IO Center)—an industry consortium dedicated to these concepts—defines iOps as “the integration of people, organizations, work processes and information technology to make smarter decisions. It is enabled by global access to real-time information; collaborative technology; and integration of multiple experts across disciplines, organizations and geographical locations.”

Industries using iOps include oil and gas, refining, chemical, power, life sciences and mining. These companies need to be able to track, display and act upon a vast amount of information that’s vital to company operations.

The physical implementation of iOps most often takes the form of an iOps command center, in which people in the local plant can meet and exchange ideas by videoconference—not just with a regional center but with an asset support center, global company experts, external experts, and vendors and partners. Engineering support can be readily supplied to a facility anywhere in the world directly to and from an iOps command center. Personnel can remotely consult on operations. Remote monitoring and diagnostics gives experts the ability to connect from around the world to process control devices and equipment such as analyzers, flowmeters, automated valves, pumps, motors, compressors, turbines and electrical equipment to diagnose and solve problems. The collective knowledge of experienced operators can be entered into databases and shared with people in all company facilities, wherever they are located.

One technological advance that makes this possible is the rapid spread of wideband communications technology, which allows face-to-face meetings among people in widely separated locations and real-time access to volumes of data.

Another technology advance essential to the implementation of integrated operations is pervasive sensing—the installation of networks of intelligent (and frequently wireless) field sensing devices—which provides process and equipment health data not only to process control and safety systems but also to applications and business systems throughout the enterprise. Pervasive sensing is the foundation that provides accurate, real-time, validated data for use in making smart business decisions.

Structure and levels of collaboration

IOps can be deployed at multiple levels, encompassing operations, maintenance, collaboration, production planning and business operations.

According to the IO Center, iOps can be visualized as a pyramid. The purpose of the pyramid is integration across disciplines, functions and organizations. At the base is data collection and data management. Above this is data analysis, modeling and prediction. Next is visualization and information-sharing in a cooperative environment. This leads to the next level, shared situational awareness and evaluation of options. At the top of the pyramid is decision-making and execution. Note that as the pyramid is ascended, the focus moves steadily from technology to people and organization. The object is enhancement of the entire value chain.

An iOps command center involves five basic attributes, which may be viewed as a continuum of functions that increasingly add business value:

  • Remote operations and remote monitoring: This allows operators and engineers to monitor and/or control a remote facility, improve process control, and diagnose and solve problems at a site;
  • Integrated/centralized maintenance: Maintenance applications integrated with work processes, possibly including centralizing and dispatching maintenance personnel, allows a higher degree of integrated planning, leading to optimized maintenance plans and budgets;
  • Collaboration: This allows maintenance, production and business personnel to collaborate with experts at other locations or at any business unit throughout the enterprise;
  • Production planning and optimization: This allows personnel to plan and optimize production at particular facilities and across the enterprise; and
  • Business operations: This allows personnel to perform operational risk management, production accounting, enterprise performance management and other tasks.

Each of these five attributes provides added value to a company to achieve operational excellence. A particular company may not implement all of these functions but instead may focus only on the attributes that add value to their business.

What can iOps do for me?

iOps is sometimes thought of as a way to take advantage of rapidly emerging business opportunities, but on a more day-to-day level it greatly enhances the ability to respond quickly to upsets, safety incidents, raw material changes, weather and other factors. iOps supports cross-enterprise collaboration to optimize processes and implement best practices. iOps enables informed business decisions.

iOps can build streamlined business processes and redesigned workflows that are centered on people and their respective roles within the company. This aligns a company’s personnel, systems, applications, suppliers and capital assets. Enterprise performance management, operational risk management and even production accounting all have more accurate results when the data are integrated across the enterprise.

iOps center personnel and subject matter experts inside and outside the company benefit greatly by having instant, real-time validated data to make informed decisions to solve problems on critical assets like turbo-machinery or to debottleneck a complex process.