More than 700 delegates and visitors gathered together on the first day of Asian Downstream Week 2016 at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Singapore today to discuss the issues, challenges and solutions for the downstream oil & gas industry.
Claus Nehmzov from the Digital Innovation Organization of BP Singapore kicked off by delivering the keynote speech, which highlighted digital innovation and initiatives at BP.
Innovation comes from outside our industry,” he said. “Smaller companies and startups are leading innovation in Singapore and we work closely with these companies to learn from them. Devices are becoming much smaller, more powerful and multi-purpose – this is changing the way the industry works.”
Vishal Mehta, Head of Digital Strategy, Architecture and Technology at Reliance Industries Limited spoke about the expectations and challenges of digitization.
“The digitization journey can be a success when all the stakeholders working for and along with your organization participate, and understand that they are a part of the transformation,” he said.
“To win in the coming years, operators will need to consider new approaches to customers, business models, innovation, operations and the workforce,” said Senthil Ramani – Managing Director, Digital Business Lead and Director, IOT Center of Excellence - Resource Industries at Accenture Consulting.
A panel on the connected supply chain stream talked about efficiencies and how to achieve a better connected supply chain in oil & gas. It is important for our upstream (external suppliers) to have a reliable and consistent supply to a manufacturing plant to make its products with the same requirements for reliable production to be able to meet the customer needs, said a panelist on the session.
Mathew George, Chief Manager of Petrochemical Marketing at Indian Oil Corporation Limited talked about how to better optimize production planning and scheduling for refiners and petrochemical operators.
“Planning and scheduling activities tend to be compartmentalised into silos. For example raw material procurement, plant scheduling and optimisation, quality control scheduling, warehouse management, downstream supply chain optimisation, secondary warehouse management, retail demand management, et cetera, are a few silos that come to mind. This leads to avoidable confusion at the interfaces between these various areas and we tend to lose out on a lot of efficiencies in between,” he said.
Refiners and petrochemical players also stated other objectives such as, improved enterprise connectivity, increased real-time analytics and enhanced collaboration by oil and gas and chemical staffs that historically did not interact much or exchange best practices.
The day ended with a session on when you should reinvest in your control system and what technologies to explore by Bob Gill, General Manager – South East Asia, ARC Advisory Group, based in Singapore.