Connected decision making for energy producers

Bringing together documents and data to enable complete visibility.

By Sean Baird March 6, 2015

Energy asset operators are faced with a paradox today: increase efficiency and reliability levels while fighting to extend the lifespan of aging plant assets. To meet these often opposing aspirations, customers frequently discover that it is critical to create a comprehensive view of the energy asset, its history, performance data, technical information, and associated documentation.

While there are many solutions that aspire to deliver this complete view for customers, they often fall short of this goal. If you step back and look at the information management challenge, the reason becomes clear: there are simply too many varied types of information to manage. There are several solution providers on the market that address portions of this challenge, from managing engineering drawings, real-time analytics, and document management. Most of these solutions excel at managing one or two types of information, although many claim to do it all.

Unfortunately, this inability to deliver the full spectrum of information management means that customers are similarly unable to gain the complete visibility and control required to effectively manage and optimize their operations.

Piecing together the solution

For years, customers have relied upon substandard capabilities in one area or another, developed customized manual or automated business processes to pull together these disparate types of information, or most often, managed without this vital capability.

Even companies that specialize in asset management software and services can struggle to accommodate all the types of equipment, processes and information that are part and parcel of a refinery. This leaves asset owners to pull together multiple platforms from multiple sources. Sometimes these can be put together in a way that might allow them to communicate, but the result will be far from seamless and critical relationships within the plant may never be quantified or even identified.

But today, new options are available to bring together complementary technologies so they support each other in a truly synergistic relationship. For example, EMC and AVEVA have partnered to deliver a solution that enables new and existing clients of both solutions to address these challenges. This advanced, integrated solution combines the functionality of two technologies: EMC Documentum Asset Operations for the management and searching of multiple forms of data, combined with AVEVA NET based Digital Information Hub (DIH) solutions for the visualization, validation and collaborative use of trusted asset data. Together these form a complete solution with equal strength in the management and control of engineering information and associated documents.

Working in combination, the solutions deliver the ability to source, aggregate and visualize all types of asset information in a single solution, ensuring easy access to trusted engineering information, enabling greatly enhanced decision support for business processes that are critical to efficient and reliable plant operations and maintenance.

By delivering comprehensive information management and visibility to customers, they get new benefits that dramatically improve their ability to maximize asset efficiency and lifespans:

  • By delivering rapid access to a trusted, digital representation of the ‘as-operating’ state of the asset, together with richer information about the plant and equipment, customers are able to make better decisions to improve operations and maintenance.
  • By integrating document review and approval processes, combined with seamless access to trusted model, tag, and equipment data, customers are able to improve the accuracy and confidence in the documentation.
  • Most importantly, by leveraging the integration between enterprise content and engineering data management, customers are able take advantage of industry-leading enterprise solutions without sacrifice.

Users of both EMC Documentum Asset Operations and AVEVA NET-based DIH have benefitted from extending their solution to take advantage of industry-leading tools to improve their asset operations.

Sean Baird leads energy and engineering industry solution marketing and market development for EMC’s Enterprise Content Division.

– Edited by CFE Media. Subscribe to the Oil & Gas Engineering eNewsletter.

Original content can be found at Oil and Gas Engineering.