In a previous blog post, we examined the Inevitability of Digital Transformation and how it is changing the world around us at an accelerated pace. Earlier, we talked to Dr. Barry Po, Ph.D (President - Smart Facilities and Chief Marketing Officer) about the Digital Transformation in Smart Facilities and the impact to the Foodservices Industry.
In the second installment our new video series, which features the Presidents of each mCloud line of business, we chat with Jason Brown (President, Smart Process) on how digital transformation is impacting the oil and gas industry.
Our customers are spread across a very broad spectrum; some of them may already have a digital transformation team with a documented digital transformation plan and while they understand that there is value there they may not understand how to leverage these new technologies to drive towards their business value.
In the Process Industries that we deal with, most of our customers have the data that they need from their control system, but the data needs to be moved up to the cloud and then what we can do is deploy some of the solutions that we have to help them leverage and get more business value out of the data that they already have. We do this through the use of IoT sensors, which are quite simple in nature and often self-powered. These sensors bring the information up to the cloud and are then combined with an edge device to pull information from the control system which is then used to evaluate control system performance, comparisons of how equipment is performing versus how it was designed to perform and we can start to benchmark and look for trends.
Once this data has been collected, we can couple that with a full 3D Digital Twin. The 3D Digital Twin itself is often a combination of existing and new laser scans, overlaid process data, maintenance information, and together is used to create a Digital Twin of the process facility. Anyone, from the field engineer to the head office executive, can remotely access the digital rendering and be able to view what equipment needs to be moved, recommend how to install a new pump or valve into a certain location etc. In the past, workers would be deployed to take physical pictures and drawings of the site, and the 3D Digital Twin has greatly reduced travel costs and the strain on resources.
Be sure to catch the final video in our series, The Digital Transformation in Smart Energy, as we explore the shift being seen in the wind industry.
