Patut Dibanggakan Sosok Reynaldi, Penolong Ibu Hamil Coba Bunuh Diri di JPO Kuningan

How do you profitably manage an asset-based business that relies on long-lived assets like drilling platforms, land-based drilling rigs, refineries and pipelines when the commodity price that impacts profitability tends to fluctuate? The oil and gas industry has tended to boom and bust. Oil was at about $30 per barrel for almost 20 years before hitting an uptick in 2004, eventually reaching $99 per barrel in 2007 and peaking at more than $143 in 2008. Six months later, prices plummeted back to $33 per barrel. Price will be driven by a number of factors including: An increase in supply as through additional exploration and production, which will drive prices down A decrease in demand, as during a recession, which also drives prices down A decrease in supply or availability, as may be exerted by OPEC nations or other cartels Government intervention and regulation, which can constrain supply increasing prices or mandate fuel efficiency, lowing demand and therefore driving price down An increase in demand, as through greater consumption in the developing world, which will increase prices As Bob McNally, nonresident fellow at the Center on Energy Industry Policy points out, this is something those in the industry may have to get used to. Getting used to the upswing is difficult enough, as companies must figure out how to maximize extraction during those peak times to optimize return, which means a struggle to hire skilled workers and a sudden push to deploy assets and ensure they are operating reliably at peak efficiency given heavier duty cycles. It does not take much imagination to understand the implications of this boom/bust cycle on business: Financial stress Periodic layoffs and loss of a skilled workforce, along with skill and leadership gaps in front line management Regular needs to activate and deactivate equipment Difficulty meeting commitments from customers and stakeholders during peak times Safety issues given inexperienced workers and due to inadequate staffing during boom times Employees are vital components of business success in the oil and gas industry, but more so than is the case in most industries, so are capital assets. These assets have long lifecycles of 10, 20, maybe even 50 or more years. So how do you plan to liquidate the cost of these assets given fluctuating oil prices that impact the value of the product that may be produced, but the value of services that are delivered to those who product the product? Individual equipment components alone may last 25 years or more in the case of an oil storage tank, 20 years in the case of a gas-fired boiler, Jackups, semisubs and drillships are still in their usable lifespan after 30 years. But during slow times, that rig may be idle for a year, two years or even longer. Deactivation and re-activation of equipment both carry hefty price tags, and the equipment is not worth much from a resale perspective on the open market. How do we plan for the construction of new assets, overhauls and lifecycle extensions of current assets and make buy/replace/ decommission decisions given the volatility of the business? A DELICATE BALANCE In order to maintain their footing during these wild fluctuations in price and demand, companies in the oil and gas industry need to balance a number of interdependent factors: Profitability and Revenue, over which executives have partial control Commodity Prices, over which executives have limited control Compliance, which will be easier to control if management adopts a balanced scorecard view of company performance as opposed to looking just at revenue Performance and operations, which underpins profitability and compliance from a practical standpoint Going forward, companies in oil and gas industry that cannot balance these will not be in business. Finding this balance, however, is challenging in that most companies rely on separate systems or entities in an organization to manage and execute on each of these four factors. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system may contain financial data, along with push-pull demand and supply chain information. Hopefully, it will also encompass human resources, project management and other essential business functions, but often these are siloed off in separate software platforms. An asset maintenance system will, in the oil and gas sector, comprise the heart of operations. How well are you maintaining your assets? Is someone gold plating the assets by performing too much maintenance on some pieces of equipment? How well are you handling predictive and prescriptive maintenance in order to reduce unplanned down time? You will need to include not just maintenance work orders and spares and repairs inventory in an asset management system, but also a full view of the cost of operating the asset over its lifecycle so you can make intelligent decisions. Compliance is typically a separate department within the organization, and only risk/compliance managers think about it. While numerous other factors from around the enterprise play a role in ensuring and then documenting compliance, this function is often siloed off in separate governance, risk and compliance software packages. Yet another department, human resources with its standalone human capital management software, must contribute to the overall performance of the assets and the organization by balancing between staffing shortfalls during periods of high demand and slash-and-burn layoffs during slower quarters. Human resources are a major performance factor—skill level of technicians is particularly important with drilling given the attendant need to follow detailed processes and procedures. Establishing balance across these different sides of the business is easier with a very complete and comprehensive ERP platform that encompasses as many of these disciplines and functions as possible. But the final element that originates from outside the organization and is therefore a wildcard is commodity price and various leading economic indicators that can provide insight into where the price and therefore demand are headed. That is why oil and gas executives need the ability to pull all of these factors together from multiple enterprise software products, along with leading indicators and commodity price information from external data sources on a real-time basis. And this is exactly what a newer class of software, operational intelligence, can provide. IFS develops and delivers enterprise software for customers around the world who manufacture and distribute goods, maintain assets, and manage service-focused operations. The industry expertise of our people and solutions, together with commitment to our customers, has made us a recognized leader and the most recommended supplier in our sector. Our team of 3,500 employees supports more than one million users worldwide from a network of local offices and through our growing ecosystem of partners. For more information, visit: IFSworld.com. judge who held a hearing about climate change that received widespread attention ruled Monday that Congress and the president were best suited to address the contribution of fossil fuels to global warming, throwing out lawsuits that sought to hold big oil companies liable for the Earth's changing environment. Noting that the world has also benefited significantly from oil and other fossil fuel, Judge William Alsup said questions about how to balance the "worldwide positives of the energy" against its role in global warming "demand the expertise of our environmental agencies, our diplomats, our Executive, and at least the Senate." "The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case," he said. Alsup's ruling came in lawsuits brought by San Francisco and neighboring Oakland that accused Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, BP and Royal Dutch Shell of long knowing that fossil fuels posed serious risks to the environment, but still promoting them as environmentally responsible. The lawsuits said the companies created a public nuisance and should pay for sea walls and other infrastructure to protect against the effects of climate change — construction that could cost billions of dollars. The Oakland city attorney's offices did not immediately have comment. John Cote, a spokesman for the San Francisco city attorney's office, said the office was reviewing the ruling and would decide its next steps "shortly," but the lawsuit had "forced a public court proceeding on climate science." "We're pleased that the court recognized that the science of global warming is no longer in dispute," he said. New York City, several California counties and at least one other California city filed similar suits. The companies said federal law controlled fossil fuel production, and Congress encouraged oil and gas development. The harm the cities claimed was "speculative" and part of a complex chain of events that included billions of oil and gas users and "environmental phenomena occurring worldwide over many decades," they said in court documents. National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons applauded the ruling in a statement. "From the moment these baseless lawsuits were filed, we have argued that the courtroom was not the proper venue to address this global challenge," said Timmons. Alsup brought in the world's leading experts on climate change at an unusual hearing in March that he said was intended to educate him about the science behind the Earth's warming. The nearly five-hour hearing covered topics including the history of climate change research, carbon dioxide's role as a greenhouse gas, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme weather. In Monday's ruling, the judge said he accepted the "vast scientific consensus" that the combustion of fossil fuels has contributed to global warming and rising sea levels. But he questioned whether it would be fair to "ignore our own responsibility in the use of fossil fuels and place the blame for global warming on those who supplied what we demanded."

Renewables, smart homes, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) will have a massive impact on how energy companies need to address the market in 2018, predicts Colin Beaney , IFS’s Global Industry Director for Energy & Utilities. Trend #1 RENEWABLES HOT UP—GLOBAL CAPACITY WILL DOUBLE OVER THE NEXT 10 YEARS Every year we’re seeing a virtuous circle speeding up around renewables and 2018 will be no exception. The more renewables are taken up, the smarter and more scalable the technology becomes, with lower construction, operating and maintenance costs. Crucially, the cheaper the energy produced becomes, too. In 2009, it cost just under $300 to generate 1 MW of electricity using solar photovoltaic panels. In 2016, the cost was down to $100. All around the world, renewables companies are now able to offer cheaper energy alternatives. In September 2016 in Nevada, state energy provider NV Energy lost almost six percent of its customer base overnight as 15 of the top casinos and hotels in Las Vegas switched over to smaller renewable energy providers. Why? “The sharp decline in the cost of renewable energy” and “being able to control what your supply looks like,” said MGM Resorts, one of the main companies moving account. BMI’s 2017 “Global Renewables Outlook” predicts the capacity of renewables will double between 2016 and 2026. A 2017 Financial Times report, The Big Green Bang, how renewable energy became unstoppable, shows that renewables capacity globally rose by nine percent in 2016, a 400 percent increase from 2000. Solar power increased by 30 percent worldwide in 2016, and for the second year in a row, renewable energy made up more than half the world’s new power generation capacity. Asian countries are spearheading the development. China accounted for more than 40 percent of capacity growth in global renewable energy in 2016, but other high-power Asian markets, like India, Malaysia and the Philippines, are expanding in renewables, too. This boom will, in turn, affect players in other geographies that will not want to fall behind. So how will this impact energy providers? Most important will be the new opportunities to adapt your business model, join new joint ventures or create new charging models—all these will be essential. Take energy provider Octopus, which delivers renewable pay-as-you-go energy through its easy-to-use online portal to customers in the UK and France. Octopus is now the UK’s largest investor in solar farms but focuses heavily on customer service, flexible payment models and transparent billing as key customer benefits—as well as renewable energy. Trend #2 WITH SMART HOMES, CONSUMERS WILL CALL THE SHOTS Amazon Alexa, Google Home, the Sony LF-S50G, the Harman Kardon Allure… what does this new generation of smart home assistants have to do with energy and utilities? Potentially, a lot. According to analysts like RBC’s Mark Mahaney, Alexa could earn $10 billion for Amazon by 2020. In addition, MarketsandMarkets predicts that the smart home market will be worth $138 billion by 2023. Smart meters constitute a big part of this, enabling customers to check and calculate their real-time energy consumption levels in the home to take appropriate steps to cut down energy costs. Thus, smart meters are expected to hold a major share of the smart home market by 2023. With one single solution for switching between devices in the home, consuming and storing energy and controlling its costs, consumers will have an increasingly powerful role. Following this, they will be in a position to drive even more flexible service and billing systems. One example of companies leveraging this demand for increased flexibility is HomeServe, a one-stop digital service company providing emergency and energy services to the home. Through its monthly digital subscription model, it supplies services to over 7.8 million homes in the UK and over 3 million homes in the US—including energy services, boilers and meters through third-party suppliers. HomeServe itself owns no energy assets, but with its strong customer service and simple payment models generating powerful loyalty and revenue, service providers like HomeServe could become energy providers soon, as customer-centric energy provision booms. The success of agile, customer-centric firms like HomeServe and Octopus is a wake-up call for energy providers. Customers increasingly hold the balance of power in a digital market. For energy and utility companies, it is a reminder of how new vital, flexible and agile billing and service, as well as operations, can pose either a competitive advantage or a threat— depending on how you are addressing the market. Trend #3 THE INDUSTRY GETS SMARTER AS AI AND IOT MOVE AHEAD As consumer demand dictates energy supply and billing, IoT, machine learning and AI capabilities will add another dimension to this, not just in the field at the edge of operations, but at the heart of products and in homes, too. Gartner predicts that “by 2022, more than 80 percent of enterprise IoT projects will have an AI component, up from less than 10 percent today.” But what would a machine-to-machine, cloud-based energy system, discretely sited in consumers’ homes, look like? In 2016 in Hawaii, Microsoft collaborated on a renewable energy initiative using 499 IoT-connected home water heaters, all IoT-enabled and connected to Microsoft Azure Cloud, to create an autonomous discrete energy grid that stores overspill energy for future use. The 499 water heaters are called Grid-Interactive Electric Thermal Storage (GETS) devices. The machines monitor energy consumption and performance and store hot water when there is a surfeit of renewable solar and wind energy. Each heater is able to store 52 to 120 gallons of piping hot water. Combined, the water heaters can hold 15 to 25 kilowatt-hours of energy. Hawaii spends about $6 billion every year importing oil, so being able to store excess renewably-generated energy could have a major impact, helping Hawaii reach its goal of its state utilities generating 100 percent of its electricity from renewable resources by 2045. One of the most impressive aspects of the Hawaii story is its precision business case. For an island with a lot of renewable wind and solar energy, storage was a key priority and would deliver obvious customer benefits. For energy providers, 2018 will be about finding the sweet spot, connecting consumers’ demands for increased flexibility and cost control to new services and charging models based on renewable energy sources and emerging technologies—those who succeed with this will be the winners.

Many oil and gas companies experienced a tough couple of years recently, as oil prices plummeted to record-low levels. The recovery of the industry started in 2017, though, and now is the time to kick it into a higher gear to reap the benefits of being an early mover. New charging models, digital investments and compliance solutions are a couple of the initiatives oil and gas companies will be pioneering to leverage the industry turnaround in 2018, predicts Magne Halvorsen, Global Industry Director for Oil & Gas at IFS. TREND #1 INDUSTRY RECOVERY WILL BOOST DIGITAL INVESTMENTS BY 30% The good news is that the cost-cutting and downsizing of the past few years are now at an end, both for the oil companies themselves and their ecosystem of suppliers. Global demand for oil is growing in the West and China, with OPEC recently claiming that it will increase its forecast by 1.35 million barrels per day (b/d) to reach 98.12m b/d. With the macro-figures telling us this increase may last for the next few decades, industry players are ramping up their activity, with many playing catch-up in the digital space. When talking to customers and prospects in the oil and gas industry, I hear the need to tap into digital technologies including cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, advanced planning and scheduling and automation to become smarter and more efficient at extracting oil and gas. Part of this is being driven by the downsizing that has taken place over recent years; with fewer crews to man rigs and facilities you need to maximize the human resources to hand. Thus, automating manual tasks becomes important. Songa Offshore is one of those at the vanguard of this push. The company has connected IoT sensors to 600 assets on each of four oil rigs throughout the North Atlantic Basin. The IoT data is fed into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, IFS Applications, which forms the basis for reducing maintenance costs and increasing productivity by driving operational efficiencies. The main potential optimization lies in the automation of work orders. If specific data points can trigger automated work orders, this will save significant time and costs. Other potential investments may come in rolling out beacon technology to improve safety by alerting crew members when they’re in a restricted zone. Elsewhere, advanced visualization and planning tools could help oil and gas contractors speed up the drilling license application process and maximize productivity by being able to better delineate which areas they are already cleared to drill in. TREND #2 INVESTMENT IN COMPLIANCE SOLUTIONS TO INCREASE BY 20% With governments around the world increasingly focused on restricting pollution, 2018 will see a continuing rise in demand for ways to minimize CO2 and NOx emissions as well as to accurately document them for compliance purposes. Thus, we are likely to see a move away from diesel-powered plants to the use of alternative energy sources, like tidal, to reduce emissions. With each rig producing as much CO2 annually as 5,000 cars, there is a heavy price to pay, financially and environmentally. Advanced compliance and risk solutions will become an essential requirement to automate the monitoring and reporting of emissions, replacing inefficient manual processes. While remote facilities have historically been difficult to connect to the internet, satellite communications are enabling a new wave of cloud-powered systems to support these efforts. TREND #3 20% OF OIL & GAS COMPANIES WILL ADOPT A MORE SERVICE-CENTRIC BUSINESS MODEL Another key evolution in the industry driving the push to become faster and more efficient at extraction involves a change in the way oil and gas companies pay their suppliers and contractors. The traditional “day rate”— the flat-fee rate a contractor is paid per day for operating, say, a drilling rig—is increasingly moving to a performance-based system. Thus, where an oil company might have agreed on a contract of $300,000 per day for 100 days, they may offer more or a bonus if that can be completed in, say, 80 days. This creates new opportunities for those industry suppliers who can become more efficient. Again, the IoT and big data analytics are key enablers here, with sensors able to feed back data on various environmental and drilling conditions to maximize productivity. However, technology alone will not produce the desired goals unless organizations can break down traditional silos between teams which monitor equipment, those which analyze weather conditions and those focused on other parts of the operation. These trends can also be seen in terms of the gradual servitization of the industry. In fact, IFS research on the benefits of servitization for oil and gas companies has revealed that those looking to add innovative service and enterprise asset management (EAM) capabilities to their offerings can reduce CO2 emissions by 10–15% and maintenance costs by 25–30%. One key area to do the latter is in the classification process. Every five years, floating rigs must be taken out of operation while essential maintenance checks and documentation take place. But with firms earning $300–400K per day, the three weeks this can take could lead to losses in the tens of millions. Advanced planning and scheduling technologies will, therefore, become a game-changer for both oil companies and service providers, helping them better plan and document maintenance offshore without the need to take vessels to the yard as frequently. These are highly sophisticated systems, maximizing the human resources on board and incorporating key risk assessments of equipment to ensure any maintenance work is done and recorded according to a strict timetable. WHAT’S NEXT? So, what do oil and gas companies need to do to make the most of these 2018 oil and gas industry trends? Fundamentally I’d suggest that many organizations are in need of a “digital cleanse.” Many legacy tools, technologies and—most importantly—processes remain in operation that might be a barrier to innovation. Automation will not work, for example, if you are simply automating inefficient and error-prone manual processes. In fact, our recent research found that only 7% of global firms are successfully harnessing data-driven insight to deliver faster time-to-innovation and competitive advantage—by far the lowest of any industry studied. Fortunately, the industry is in good shape to recover from recent years of underinvestment. Enterprises know what’s required to capitalize on the current upturn to become modern, competitive organizations. But to achieve this next level of growth, increase margins and support exciting new business models, these firms will need to invest in new digital skills as well as technologies. IFS develops and delivers enterprise software for customers around the world who manufacture and distribute goods, maintain assets, and manage service-focused operations. The industry expertise of our people and solutions, together with commitment to our customers, has made us a recognized leader and the most recommended supplier in our sector. Our team of 3,500 employees supports more than one million users worldwide from a network of local offices and through our growing ecosystem of partners. For more information, visit: IFSworld.com.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: POWERING THE OIL & GAS INDUSTRY July 1, 2018 Digital transformation in the oil and gas industry is already a fact of life. In the present climate, the quest is not only for volume, but rather for value. Oil companies need to make money in a new price regime. The oil and gas business model can no longer sustain an inflated and inefficient value chain in the search for, and delivery of, hydrocarbons to the world markets. Digital transformation is a predominant trend impacting today’s global business. Broadly speaking, digital transformation speaks to the changes produced by the application of digital technology to society at large—just walk down a street or go into a coffee shop and look at the eyes focused on the ubiquitous smartphone. But for business, digital transformation goes beyond the tactical application of technology—something that has been happening in enterprises for years—to the strategic incorporation of digital technology as the very basis for competition. It is transforming business models by speeding innovation and making ongoing practical gains in operational efficiencies, product design, development and delivery, and customer relationships. It’s changing the way companies think about coming to market. Many of the ideas driven by digital transformation and Big Data have found new and innovative ways of transforming consumer and media markets. Further, environmental and societal changes are increasingly shaped by the power of the new ways of sourcing and analyzing information. For the sake of this discussion, let us make a distinction between the consumer and behavioral disciplines and the oil and gas industry. Instead of Big Data, let’s call it Smart Data—industrial application of data based on a deep understanding of technology and processes. Utilizing data to improve performance is not a new concept, but what is new is the pace of change in capturing the effects of automation and process know-how. This is now a global race to become “the digital winner,” as it is widely understood that future winners will need to be on top of this digital development. What really has spurred this change is a strong underlying technological change that has happened over the last 10 years: Cost of data processing improved by a factor of 60 Cost of bandwidth improved by a factor of 40 Cost of data improved by a factor of 1,000 Cost of sensors improved by at least 50 percent Combine this with a generation that has grown up with the digital world— that is always connected and tuned into the digital economy— and the result is strong digital innovation in all industries. IoT benefits for equipment vendors In the oil and gas industry, you see the most prominent change in business models among equipment vendors. Equipment manufacturers embedding machine-learning technologies into equipment for condition-based maintenance to help customers extract maximum value and efficiency from their infrastructure are not a new phenomenon. But building entirely new business models onto these technologies is relatively new. These suppliers want to provide support services such as data monitoring that will help customers optimize equipment utilization and maintenance strategies, as well as provide data that can be used in the design phase of new products. With enhanced user data, the precision of design parameters can be improved significantly, thereby optimizing the product cost and value relationship. This marks a turning point in the business strategy of suppliers, as oil and gas companies have historically been hesitant to rely on equipment suppliers to run maintenance programs due to fear of vendor lock-in, which pushes up costs. While the fear of lock-in is still relevant, we also see the business benefits that not only improve the equipment vendor’s margin significantly, but also the benefit for the end user. Asset owners increasingly see the benefit in gathering data from their installations to improve operations and look for ways to own both the data they generate and the technology that enables them to manage condition-based maintenance programs. Expect to see this understanding become practice as more oil and gas companies take steps to capture and learn from smart data to make their operations smarter and reduce costs. The ones that manage to capture scale effects in this regard are particularly well positioned, so therefore expect the largest fleet owners to be the most aggressive in leading this development. You may also see pooling of data becoming more widespread, even if this sharing of data may be controversial. In areas of health, safety, environment and quality (HSEQ), this may be less controversial— and may lead the way. Real-time monitoring, accurate reporting for compliance purposes, integration of Wi-Fi, and location-based technologies are examples of this trend. Sensors and 3D printing Several technologies are speeding this development, specifically sensors and 3D printing. The increasing sophistication and lower costs of sensors are making their broad scale application feasible as a means of building the Internet of Things (IoT) and realizing the benefits it offers to oil and gas companies, such as machine learning. 3D printing is emerging as an innovative alternative for companies in the oil and gas sector as they scrutinize their supply chains and engineering practices. An increasing number of oil and gas companies are already deploying 3D printing technology, using it in two different ways:1 To create models that can be used for training. Innovation in training methods has been driven by the need to move away from on-site apprenticeships due to a mixture of safety issues and new technology requirements in the field. This combination has changed what is practical to teach on site, making 3D printing particularly valuable in teaching onsite equipment repair and maintenance, especially for offshore and subsea equipment. To replace traditional tools and parts, helping access and maintain equipment in remote areas. Parts and equipment that could be 3D printed include almost anything that can be drawn in 2D (e.g., drill bit molds, fix cutter drill bit bodies, and other down-hole tools). These examples of digital developments are enabling businesses to cut costs and improve performance and asset integrity. They’re beginning to be rolled out in maintenance and operations due to necessity, driven by the drop in the price of oil. Other use cases of digital transformation specific to the oil and gas sector include: Performance forecasting Production forecasts across thousands of wells Enhanced oil recovery Analytics across unconventional assets Analytics have been shown to help exploration companies extract 3-5% more oil Predictive maintenance Automation of work Transferring work onshore from offshore facilities Integration of Wi-Fi and location-based technologies to allow for remote monitoring of potential incidents, tracking and tracing not only people in potentially dangerous situations, but also contractors and equipment utilization Enhanced asset security The increase of hydrocarbon shrinkage through theft and leakage is a problem that can be identified and tracked through logistics analytics To be sure, the technologies driving the digital transformation are challenging companies—ratcheting up the pressure on them to change—but they are also providing exciting opportunities. Those consistently looking to what’s next as oil and gas evolves will benefit greatly as the digital transformation continues. Driving the Transformation The technologies of social media, mobile computing, cloud computing, analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are the principal drivers of digital transformation. As a group, these technologies comprise a platform defined by the interdependencies between them, and Gartner notes that these interdependent trends are “transforming the way people and businesses relate to technology.”2 Particularly key to the oil and gas sector has been the development of IoT. According to IDC, “The Internet of Things is one of a handful of technology areas [that] are set to drive growth and innovation in the coming decade. It both enables and is fueled by digital transformation—it allows companies to digitalize, optimize, and automate processes [that] were not previously connected to IT systems.”3 As the number of connected endpoints grows exponentially, massive amounts of data will be produced: The installed base of IoT endpoints will grow to more than 30 billion by the end of the decade from just less than 13 billion units in 2015. As a consequence, machine-generated data will comprise an increasing share of stored data: by 2020, 10 percent of the 44 zettabyte digital universe will originate from IoT devices. In five years, there will be seven times more IoT data than there is today. All this will drive the need for more enterprise systems to deploy, manage, and make use of IoT, as well as the necessity to establish standards for interoperability and connectivity. From an infrastructure perspective, traffic will shift from the center of the network outward to inward from the edge, as increasingly more data flows from the connected devices of IoT into the data center. This will affect computing and communications architectures. Edge Data Processing and Technology Convergence Two related developments are the convergence of technologies and edge data processing. As operational technologies (OT) increasingly include software and sensors, OT and IT converge in systems comprising smart machines, storage systems, and facilities capable of autonomously exchanging information, triggering actions, and controlling each other independently. While IoT data can be processed at the data center or at the edge of the network, the amount of content that will be generated at the edge will demand that process queries be delivered to the data rather than bringing the data to the enterprise data center. Indeed, edge processing will drive innovation in analytics, systems, and operational management. This is particularly key in oil and gas, where companies can now take advantage of real-time data analytics and new IoT applications that require low, predictable latency. Consider a typical offshore oil platform that generates between 1TB and 2TB of data daily. Most of this data is time-sensitive, relating to platform production and safety issues. Using a satellite connection (i.e., the most common communications link for offshore oil platforms), it would typically take 12 days to move one day’s worth of oil platform data to a central repository. But with edge processing, companies can assess this data locally to determine whether it needs to be moved to the cloud or datacenter—or analyzed where it is, at the edge of the network.4 Driving the Adoption For oil and gas companies and their suppliers, the move to leverage IoT and realize digital transformation is driven by the real value the transformation promises in three key areas: Customers Companies will win business and differentiate themselves through the greater customer satisfaction and better customer experiences facilitated by digital transformation. Operations Digital transformation will open up new operational efficiencies, productivity gains, and cost benefits for those companies that successfully make the transformation. Offerings By enabling businesses greater agility to broaden or change their business models, digital transformation supports the introduction of innovative products and services to meet changing market dynamics. Impacts on Oil and Gas There are significant benefits in the oil and gas sector for those companies that leverage digital transformation to optimize the use of critical equipment. Two overarching benefits are better maintenance and higher equipment availability. First, consider maintenance. Oil and gas equipment has different wear and tear depending on where it is located. For instance, a riser gets different tension on the string depending on where it is situated physically, from the rig down to the floor level. It’s important to track the wear on this piece, which can be done by data gathered in monitoring the physical conditions of equipment. Whether in use or being stored, all this information can be put together with an RFID tag to monitor what has been happening to the equipment. Based on that information, a company can optimize its maintenance plan. Second, consider availability—or put another way, the cost of downtime. This is where most IoT applications have been targeted in oil and gas: leveraging sensors to remotely monitor equipment to help make decisions about whether or not to shut it down. That’s a very expensive decision to make. Typically, oil and gas companies monitor a fleet of similar equipment from a central unit or control location. When an anomaly is detected, personnel from the company and the equipment manufacturer assess diagnostics before a shutdown is ordered. Increasingly, these data monitoring centers are run by equipment providers as part of the support services they contract to oil and gas customers. General Electric, for example, is doing this for gas turbines, surveying a potential of 5,000 GE installations at once. IoT Transforming Work Processes The digital transformation is also rapidly transforming work processes in oil and gas. Remote sensors and drones are reducing the need for people to physically monitor equipment. For instance, autonomous robotic drilling now enables the complete removal of people from the drill floor5, robotic moving platforms are being developed for shale wells, and remotely controlled trucks are being developed to transport oil or gas. According to Accenture, “Digital technologies are not only rapidly changing the practice of work [in oil and gas], but they are also reshaping the very nature of the workforce and its work experiences in everything from hiring experiences to jobs to careers.”6 Supporting Digital Transformation in Oil and Gas A company pursuing digital transformation must have tools that allow executives and managers to review and orchestrate processes that align with their business strategy to ensure process execution delivers that strategy. This means bringing data to the desktop, visually, to provide decision makers a complete understanding of which functions deliver real customer value, which are less effective, and which waste both time and resources in terms of meeting organizational goals. Ultimately, this enables businesses to accelerate the realization of their business strategy—in this case, by moving to become a digitally transformed business—by making better decisions, faster. This can happen by assessing real-time business performance in the context of how it affects key business processes and goals, giving managers real-time operational intelligence and actionable controls to solve issues before they become problems. The solution is about strategy acceleration and execution. Streamline, Automate, Optimize At IFS, we focus on the efficient execution of work processes. For our customers, optimizing execution is first and foremost, so the primary goal of our software is to have that execution streamlined, automated, and optimized. We’ve also invested heavily in predictive analytics, getting ahead of the curve so that when equipment has been instrumented, sensors put data into the cloud, then machine learning algorithms assess that data, and, in conjunction with historical information, come up with a predictive model that companies can rely on for execution. That model is optimized. To effectively leverage that, we have intelligence to assess the situation in real time and trigger action based on the assessment. This leads to a broad scale IoT approach. To realize the value from an IoT solution, an organization’s enterprise software must capture data effectively, present it in real time, and make it actionable. By leveraging the Microsoft® Azure™ IoT cloud platform, IFS is partnering with Microsoft to collect large IoT data volumes and feed them into IFS Applications™. IFS is incorporating the IoT infrastructure into IFS Applications to collect data from devices and sensors and trigger actions in the system to empower organizations to be more agile, make smarter business decisions, and automate processes in a new and transformative way. In oil and gas, where companies are clearly accelerating efforts for digital transformation, IFS Applications can function as a unifying hub for gathering and processing data from disparate sources across the enterprise, eliminating the need for proprietary solutions from equipment providers. For companies that typically—and purposefully—leverage multiple suppliers, this is an advantage as it streamlines access to essential data. Consequently, it delivers value across the total enterprise (e.g., warehouse optimization, production control, supply chain synchronization, maintenance planning, and back office efficiencies). What’s Next? A recent report on the state of digital transformation had some interesting results: 88 percent of companies surveyed said they were undergoing digital transformation efforts, but only a quarter had an understanding of what it is.7 The challenge creating this gap, according to Forbes, was not investment in technology, but rather the realignment of business models to reflect the transformation being sought.8 This underscores the point made by IDC: digital transformation is not just a technology trend, but rather a core business approach at the center of enterprise strategies across all industry segments and markets.10 The advent of digital transformation has both immediate and long-term implications for oil and gas companies. You need to identify and assess the value of your data and build necessary IT platforms to take advantage of new technologies, particularly IoT—now. You also need to evaluate and reevaluate vendors in the context of what is happening now. Those who will help you realize the digital transformation you seek will have a deep and committed understanding of what digital transformation means—and can achieve—across the enterprise, so they can help you execute effectively when digital opportunities present themselves, as they will. For some organizations, facing these challenges may be threatening or intimidating; but for others they lead to pragmatic solutions to today’s challenges that set them apart as industry leaders. In these cases, organizations have reached out for what’s next. They all believe their best days are ahead of them, and what’s next is what really matters. They don’t just take opportunities—they make them by actively participating in the transformation process NOTES Reed, Jeff, “Real World Application of 3D Printing in O&G: A Subsea Training Game Changer,” http://oilpro.com/post/3176/real-world-application-of-3d-printing-in-og-a-subsea-training-game-changer Gartner, “The Nexus of Forces: Social, Mobile, Cloud and Information,” December 3, 2014; http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/nexus-of-forces/. IDC, “Digital Transformation: An Internet of Things Perspective,” March 2016. Anand, Mala, “Digital Transformation in the Oil and gas Industry: Drill, Data, Drill,” Cisco Blog, The Platform, June 25, 2015, http://blogs.cisco.com/news/digital-transformation-in-the-oil-gas-industry-drill-data-drill Robotic Drilling Systems AS, www.rds.no/home. Sloman, Colin; Holsman, Rich; and Cantrell, Susan, “Digitizing Energy: The Future of Work in the Oil and Gas Industry,’ Accenture, May 23, 2015 Solis, Brian, “The 2014 State of Digital Transformation,” Altimeter Group, 2014. Bloomberg, Jason, “Digital Transformation by Any Other Name?” Forbes, July 31, 2014. Ibid, IDC.