What You Should Take Away
The EIDI collects raw time-series data from many sensors, control systems, and software systems to integrate real-time data and relevant operational information into a permanent data archive. This data infrastructure becomes the operations system of record and is used by humans and other software systems for specific functions, such as process analysis, production reporting, and business system integration.
The Proclndustries South Texas refinery digital transformation team prioritized what outcomes were important to getting the refinery to adopt best operating practices:
- 1. Aggregate all digitized real-time information to consolidate siloed data into a time-series data system of record.
- 2. Institute real-time situational awareness to identify and correct operational, safety, and maintenance problems before they become serious.
- 3. Continuously improve asset reliability to reduce unscheduled downtime.
- 4. Identify and correct bottlenecks in production and processes.
- 5. Manage energy consumption and water usage.
- 6. Create the ability to produce scheduled and ad hoc reports for internal consumption and for external compliance.
- 7. Generate real-time alerts when equipment or operating conditions deviate from accepted ranges.
- 8. Establish the ability to send data and interface with other Proclndustries software systems, such as business systems, laboratory quality systems, and emissions monitoring systems.
To achieve this, they have identified key EIDI functions that enable them to reach these goals:
- • The ability to collect all real-time refinery data into a permanent data archive.
- • The EIDI to be used as a separate data analysis platform from software systems located on the refinery control system network, so that plant operations are not compromised.
- • The ability to define refinery asset in a hierarchical data model, so that similar asset types can be defined one time and replicated thereafter, which reduces deployment time and enables easier EIDI software maintenance.
- • The ability to create time-sliced production events so that they are easily viewed and analyzed.
To create the EIDI digital plant database, the team recognized the need for good block flow and process flow diagrams to produce basic data structures and basic data navigation. A secondary requirement for creating the EIDI database is using process flow diagrams to check sensor locations in the refinery. These are used to configure the data definitions for physical elements. Process engineers can build performance calculations and create empirical models to infer laboratory results based on operating conditions.
A successful implementation of the EIDI at the South Texas refinery generates an opportunity to share results achieved with Proclndustries management and other refineries. The company can now think about other possible insights from analysis of real-time data and events, such as the benefits of a common data visualization and analytics toolset and having subject matter experts use and share insights across different parts of the company.
