ABB Ability offers granular insight into oil/gas/chemical processes

Using its digital backbone, ABB Ability, the company is launching an enterprise-wide deep dive into facilities data, presenting a common view of analytics available to CEO-level executives through to maintenance teams on production sites.

Companies in the oil, gas and chemicals sector can deep dive into their data, regardless of which vendor’s control system is used, with business intelligence and data analytics across areas presented within a single window. This allows more joined-up (and thus more effective) decision-making through improved, shared insights into company data. And, using this common window, each user—whether maintenance manager or headquarters executive—is able to configure the view and have performance indicators and measures presented using the latest visual analysis tools.

“With ABB Ability Enterprise Analytics, insights are combined into a single dashboard that, for the first time, transforms data into easily actionable information for executives, plant, process and maintenance managers across the entire oil, gas and chemicals (OGC) sector,” explains ABB’s Håvard Devold. “The financial upside of this to operators is significant as up to 30 percent savings in capital and operating expenditures are achievable.”

ABB is able to present and integrate data from any third-party system, while ensuring that the intellectual property of that data remains in the ownership of the customer. “We believe that customers own their data, and they should know what ABB will be doing with it. Customers also need to provide consent before we share any of their data. We respect the intellectual property of our customers. We don’t ask customers of ABB Ability solutions to cede their IP rights to us when they use our digital solutions,” explains Devold.

“Our domain expertise and extensive portfolio of products and systems puts us in a position that no other supplier can offer the oil, gas and chemicals sector. Our experience across all operational dimensions has enabled us to create a ‘single pane of glass’ that gives quick and easy visibility at a device, process, plant and enterprise level, depending on who needs the specific information.” 

Supporting the single dashboard view are ABB’s Collaborative Operations Centers, which digitally connect the company’s customers with ABB’s experts worldwide. These centers let ABB see all customer sites, along with a case management system that identifies critical assets in need of urgent attention. 

By tapping into ABB’s domain knowledge and experts through the Collaborative Operations Centers, customers can identify the root cause of problems extremely efficiently. Not only that, at headquarters, executives can easily access plant performance at the enterprise level to assess safety, efficiency and production issues. 

Driving demand for this dashboard are six challenges ABB has identified from decades of customer feedback:

1. Safety and alarm management
2. Power management and electrification
3. Plant performance solutions and services
4. Asset management and condition monitoring
5. Smart wells flow assurance and production optimization
6. Digital projects execution

This analytics capability now gives oil, gas and chemical companies the kind of joined-up view of operations that will transform their results, according to ABB, by making it easier for the right information to be acted upon by the right people at the right time, all in a single view.