______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
At the same time , operators need to innovate to make certain they can do everything from running greener , more sustainable operations to ensuring they achieve optimum safety standards , forecast demand accurately and recruit and retain the best people . Doing all this relies on a combination of access to real-time data and the ability to achieve operational agility .
Engineering operations teams need to have quality information at their fingertips to decide whether to spend money on replacing , or overhauling an ageing asset
The data dimension
One of the biggest issues all energy companies face is around visibility of information . Engineering operations teams need to have quality information at their fingertips to decide whether to spend money on replacing , or overhauling an ageing asset .
That information could potentially come from multiple sources . It could come from the asset itself . It could be based on maintenance activities . Whatever the individual sources , they need to be aggregated in a cohesive way to ensure that the combined data is able to fully support a decision on the future strategy or tactics to be employed .
Cost-related information is certainly key here . Operating expenditure ( OPEX ) is always an important metric when companies are looking at what they should be doing , especially where it relates to capital assets , which can be expensive to manage and maintain but even more expensive to purchase new .
For the oil and gas company concerned , looking at how much it is costing to operate and maintain the asset is clearly a key decision point for example .
Another important issue is the efficiency of the workforce . If the organization is not effective at planning and scheduling activities for instance , it could potentially miss maintenance schedules or not perform work in the right timeframe and that will also impact on reliability . Having the right systems and data in place is key here in increasing uptime , availability of service and workforce productivity , while looking after activity right the way through , be it upstream , midstream , downstream , or field-based .
All these different points of reference are sources of information that support any decision . If they are disjointed or don ’ t reflect in the same way across the asset , then the business will either not able to make a decent decision , make the wrong one or even fail to make one at all . That will in turn reflect on the performance of the asset itself .
How ERP can deliver
Having a robust and resilient enterprise resource planning ( ERP ) solution such as SAP S4 / HANA in place is critical to managing all this data efficiently to drive seamless business operations . Such systems do this by creating a single master record of all business processes and operations , including systems and people , from a range of applications and sources , both internal and external . The master data serves as an accurate , reliable source of business information that can be managed and shared across the organization to support robust decisions . When used
28