Connected Productivity in the Petrochemical Industry – Optimizing Information Sharing
The petrochemical industry faces the consistent, yet ever more difficult challenge of improving workflow, personnel efficiency and enterprise-wide productivity, so it is increasingly important to make essential infrastructure investments which enhance the delivery of critical business metrics which have a direct impact on management decision-making. And while it is important to be able to integrate laboratory-generated data with ERP systems, PIMS, MES and other collaboration tools throughout the organization, it is equally important to manage these efforts with minimum impact to shareholder value while maximizing ROI.
This article will explore some of the challenges facing the industry and highlight one of the world’s largest oil and gas projects, demonstrating the benefits achieved when utilizing an integrated enterprise level laboratory information management system (LIMS) to connect the organization.
This integration of informatics solutions with a variety of enterprise systems is particularly relevant in today’s business climate, where the benchmarks for speed, accuracy and efficiency, as well as price to value, are being pushed higher and higher. Without connected systems and a continuous feed of laboratory and quality data throughout the organization and up to management levels, where these key business metrics are monitored, true efficiency and enhanced productivity becomes a goal that is increasingly difficult to reach.
The Oil and Gas Industry – Integration Challenges
The process of achieving systems integration within the oil and gas industry can be challenged by any or all of the following situations, none of which are easily resolved without a dedicated strategy to connect productivity to information sharing across the enterprise:
– Fragmented support from individual vendors or IT personnel not fully trained in the unrelated systems
– Complex software upgrades required for disparate systems originating from different vendors
– Error-prone manual work due to a limited data exchange and availability at all levels for all systems/users
– Difficulty in implementing new solutions
– Un-aligned terminology between similar systems
– ERP systems failing to utilize the referential and dynamic data of sub systems
– Inability to fully benefit from the capabilities and data of real-time systems
– Changes in one system that cascade into changes across other systems
Global oil demand continues to increase, but at the same time, oil and gas producers will continue to be challenged by the fluctuation in prices, making it imperative that their infrastructure is well grounded in standardized processes to enable production scale up or down when this mitigates some of the natural vagaries of the market. Producers are looking to integrate processes more fully from upstream operations to downstream so that a more centralized data flow can inform managers of critical business information when needed. Lab and management alike are looking for systems that are flexible and can integrate with centralized, field-based or remote laboratories and existing enterprise systems.
Application Example
Thermo Fisher Scientific has worked with the leading global oil and gas companies with enterprise-wide deployments of SampleManager LIMS with the aim of reducing costs and increasing productivity, while ensuring optimum product quality and compliance with ISO 17025. One of the world’s largest petrochemical companies with major manufacturing facilities in all regions around the world needed a LIMS to:
– ensure its products maintain a uniform quality standard worldwide,
– optimize the efficiency and throughput of its continuous processes,
– keep within governmental safety standards, and
– control production with rigorous testing and real-time monitoring.
The company looked for a solution to sort test data and organize it into specific report formats in order to meet customer requirements. The company also required a solution that would manage the complete testing routine from sample login to preparation, testing, re-testing, and final reporting. The LIMS was also required to support the streamlining of laboratory information workflows while monitoring both the quality of the product and ensuring a clean and safe environment. The LIMS solution needed to provide full audit capabilities for routine reporting to regulatory agencies.
In addition, the LIMS solution was required to easily integrate with other technologies employed by the company, including their standard ERP system (SAP) and Process Information Management System (OSI PI). Following initial successful implementation on one site, the company decided to commence an enterprise-wide LIMS standardization project, implementing Thermo Scientific SampleManager LIMS across 27 of its production sites across the US, Europe and Asia Pacific. This global IT solution was intended to improve the company’s business decision-making process and continuously improve its working practices as well as deliver a standardized IT framework throughout the organization.
Thermo Scientific SampleManager LIMS now impacts the wider global organization, integrating the laboratory with the rest of the enterprise by interfacing LIMS with SAP, OSI PI, as well as Honeywell PHD and Yokogawa Exaquantum – these are just a few of the many enterprise systems in place that are now connected with the LIMS. Since each plant may have its own unique combination of IT applications, often deployed prior to being acquired, or selected at a local level, SampleManager LIMS needed to be able to fit within each localized framework, while delivering the same critical business knowledge to all levels of the organization.
Benefits
The benefits of better and more consistent quality products, faster and more informed decision making, higher customer satisfaction, and stable or improved profit margins can all be obtained by adopting an enterprise integration approach when investing in laboratory information management systems. By implementing a coherent strategy that can integrate data from LIMS, CDS (chromatography data systems), ERP, MES, ELN (electronic laboratory notebooks) and other information sources across the enterprise, both the business and customers benefit.
Oil and gas exploration and production companies are working in an environment of increasingly compressed time and money. Financial pressure to complete projects at ever lower costs continues to challenge oil and gas companies to deliver professionally, safely, on-time and within budget. Partnering with companies that already have many years of integration project expertise, and that can develop breakthrough software applications which deliver unique functionality to all segments of the exploration and production process, ensures that the business may exceed shareholder expectations even during times of worldwide economic pressures and throughout the natural ups and downs of market pricing.
Conclusion
In today’s resource constrained environment, companies investing in solutions that maximize their IT systems investments while delivering critical data to the management decision making process, will find they are more able to weather changing economic and market conditions. To set the stage for greater productivity, improved margins and continued shareholder satisfaction, petrochemical companies now need to consider their laboratory, manufacturing, field exploration, production and multiple enterprise systems as an integrated whole, responsible for contributing the most important business metrics to local and global management teams.
For more information about Thermo Scientific Informatics solutions, please call +1866-463-6522 (US), +44 161 942 3000 (EU), e-mail marketing.informatics@thermofisher.com or visit www.thermoscientific.com/informatics
About the author
Colin Thurston is Director of Product Strategy, Process Industries at Thermo Fisher Scientific.
Colin Thurston joined Thermo Fisher Scientific Informatics in 1996. He is the Director of Products Strategy, Process Industries, and is responsible for determining the strategy of Thermo Fisher’s current portfolio while identifying new market opportunities within the Process Industry sector. Colin Thurston has worked for Thermo Fisher for the past eleven years in the development, sales, support, and marketing of laboratory software. A graduate of Salford University with a BSc in Chemistry, Colin began his career doing solid state secondary lithium battery research.
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About Thermo Fisher Scientific
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE: TMO) is the world leader in serving science. Our mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. With revenues of nearly $11 billion, we have approximately 37,000 employees and serve customers within pharmaceutical and biotech companies, hospitals and clinical diagnostic labs, universities, research institutions and government agencies, as well as in environmental and process control industries. We create value for our key stakeholders through two premier brands, Thermo Scientific and Fisher Scientific, which offer a unique combination of continuous technology development and the most convenient purchasing options. Our products and services help accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, and solve analytical challenges ranging from complex research to routine testing to field applications. Visit www.thermofisher.com.
