How operational data, analytics, and visualization is transforming the way industries work

Dispatches from AVEVA World 2023

Posted: December 15, 2023
 

As the leader of AVEVA’s industry marketing team, I help my team work hand-in-hand with our customers to share their transformation stories. We help our customers show how they create new value for their business when they implement the latest technologies such as cloud and edge computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced analytics, digital twins, and more. This year, our team partnered with over 130 customers to share how they’re using industrial software to transform the way their teams work and achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency, safety, and reliability.

This was the second in-person AVEVA World event since the 2021 merger of OSIsoft and AVEVA–bringing OSIsoft’s world-class data management system together with AVEVA’s leading industrial software. As I took in different presentations over the course of the three-day event, I marveled at how customers are taking advantage of how we are combining our industrial software solutions through seamless interoperability.

As the volume of useful industrial data is exploding across industrial organizations, customers can benefit from the now-native connections between AVEVA™ PI System™ and other AVEVA software products, like AVEVA™ Predictive Analytics and AVEVA™ Unified Operations Center. These connections are making it easier for decision-makers across our customers’ enterprises to access, visualize and analyze that data, break down functional silos, and collaborate efficiently to solve pressing issues.

Here’s a small sample of some of the highlights I took away from the customer presentations at this event:

• ASARCO – Mining
  
• Yinson – Energy
• TotalEnergies – Energy
• B.Grimm Power - Power

ASARCO (American Smelting and Refining Company), the US-based subsidiary of Grupo México, is an integrated copper mining, smelting and refining company that operates three mines, associated mills, and a smelter in Arizona. ASARCO has a nearly 125-year heritage and is embracing digital transformation to modernize the way its employees work. At the conference, representatives from ASARCO recounted how they used AVEVA PI System data with AVEVA Predictive Analytics at the Ray Mine. By using the AVEVA PI System asset framework to encode tribal knowledge, ASARCO built models that could proactively alert it to impending asset failures. The speakers described numerous positive results of early-warning detection, including preventing four days of downtime at the company’s SAG Mill and stopping the loss of half of production for two days at its Ball Mill.

Speakers from Yinson, which produces some of the world’s most sophisticated floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) platforms, shared their experience of partnering with AVEVA. The company wanted to drive its vision of truly sustainable autonomous FPSO operations by improving asset reliability with risk-based, AI-powered asset management. Yinson created an integrated asset performance management solution for its entire fleet of vessels by combining asset data from AVEVA™ Asset Information Management with operational data from AVEVA PI System. Users can then share the data with applications such as AVEVA Predictive Analytics and AVEVA™ Asset Strategy Optimization. AVEVA Unified Operations Center allows users to create data visualizations and give single-pane-of-glass access to everyone across the company. With this kind of access to data, workers can make faster, more-informed decisions about their fleet. The speakers concluded that the partnership with AVEVA has yielded many benefits, including increased asset visibility, improved planned maintenance, reduced maintenance cost, reduced breakdowns and operational downtime, and reduced work order execution and management time when breakdowns do occur.

TotalEnergies, a multi-energy company that produces and markets fuels, natural gas and electricity, also shared its ten-year journey of building a remote assistance intervention and diagnosis (RAID) program. The company uses AVEVA PI System and AVEVA Predictive Analytics together across over 500 shaft lines throughout its upstream, downstream, and electrical combined cycle operations. The RAID system now alerts operators to situations over 10,000 times per year. TotalEnergies documented nearly 550 true catches that warranted immediate corrective action to prevent downtime in 2022 alone.

B.Grimm Power, a Thailand-based energy company that focuses on the development, financing, construction and operation of greenfield power plants, also shared how it uses a data-driven approach to its maintenance strategy with AVEVA PI System and AVEVA Predictive Analytics. The company’s operations and maintenance (O&M) staff had concluded that its previous condition-based monitoring capability was insufficient. As it was inexperienced with big data analytics, B.Grimm Power turned to AVEVA’s solutions to help it shorten plant outage duration without jeopardizing reliability and performance. After implementing AVEVA technologies, workers were able to detect early signs of failure and conduct turbomachinery diagnosis to locate defects. The program resulted in a 50% reduction of outage duration and reduced maintenance costs by over US$1 million, while lowering risk of failure and empowering its existing O&M staff.

It was extremely exciting to hear speakers from companies all over the world share these real-world results at the conference. These examples are just a handful of the amazing digital transformation use-cases that I heard about during AVEVA World 2023. If you are interested in discovering more stories about how our solutions are connecting industrial communities and enabling the drive for a more sustainable future, please visit our archive of presentations with thousands of stories of digital transformations.