Accenture provides digital lift for refineries
ACCENTURE has developed a predictive asset maintenance and cloud platform for refineries that the technology company says will support the growth of the sector in Thailand.
Intira Laomeepol, managing director of the resource operation group at Accenture in Thailand, said refinery operators in the country could benefit from the use of digital technology to support their businesses. The company expects that these operators will invest in digital technology to support their businesses, which are seen growing at about 5-10 per cent this year, Intira said.
The company says the release of its predictive asset maintenance solutions comes as part of its support to the energy market. These services “improve the up-times, performance and availability of assets by understanding equipment reliability and predicting early warning signals”, it says.
The company’s cloud platform is a hybrid, multi-cloud system that “helps operators manage enterprise cloud resources securely and effectively to the energy market”.
Intira said that the solutions and platform would create benefits to business of around 10-15 per cent. The main target markets for Accenture in Thailand are the energy, financial, retail and airline sectors.
Intira said the company also provides energy operators with the Accenture Connected Refinery research. In March, it surveyed more than 200 executives, functional leaders and engineers at refiners globally. The research reported that 57 per cent of respondents said that their current level of digital investment overall was more or significantly more than for the previous 12 months.
While this spending is set to increase, only 19 per cent of refiners rated digital as one of their top three priorities for spending on plant efficiency and productivity over the next three years.
“Investment in digital technology, when deployed at scale, can generate operational savings far exceeding the investment costs, even in the short term,” Intira said. “The fact that refiners plan to spend more on digital shows that they are cautiously optimistic about the incremental benefits to operations that new digital technologies can provide.
“While there is also concern about the cost of deploying these new solutions, leveraging Big Data and analytics for real-time operational insights could help refiners achieve best-in-class operation performance.”
Moreover, the survey also reported that the top three technologies that affect the operational performance for refiners are Big Data, cyber security and mobility that will help to improve performance and productivity as a whole.
