Register      Login
Australian Energy Producers Journal Australian Energy Producers Journal Society
Journal of Australian Energy Producers
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Non peer reviewed)

Digitalisation driving competitiveness

Steve Royston
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

ABB Limited, Howard Road, Eaton Socon, St. Neots, Cambridgeshire, PE19 8EU, United Kingdom. Email: steve.royston@gb.abb.com

The APPEA Journal 59(2) 712-714 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ18262
Accepted: 19 March 2019   Published: 17 June 2019

Abstract

Digitalisation allows industrial companies to get a highly granular view of their assets which, when viewed in conjunction with data from more traditional business systems, can generate quicker and better insights to drive competitive advantage. Companies will be poised to take their performance and productivity to the next level of efficiency, safety and security. Case studies increasingly show that cost-effective digital technology facilitates improve monitoring, and more collaborative operations drive greater productivity at reduced costs and risk. Using oil, gas and chemical industry examples, this paper discusses the vertically integrated data model from edge devices to cloud data repositories and presents how analytics and big data technologies gain insights into production, maintenance efficiency and safe operations, and enable efficient business processes. Significant competitive advantage will fall to companies that are able to develop an end-to-end digitalised ecosystem that delivers timely, manageable data-driven insights to optimise decision-making. Being able to leverage insights from big data models will help savvy operators steal a march on competitors that are slower to read the market signals because of an outdated method of forecasting.

Keywords: condition monitoring, oil and gas, operational safety, technology, unconventional onshore.

Steve Royston has over 34 years of experience working as a professional electrical and electronic engineer in the area of industrial automation. Throughout that time, Steve has worked in oil, gas and chemicals, metals and pulp and paper industries. Working as the Global Onshore Technology Manager for ABB, Steve is responsible for developing digital solutions in the onshore upstream and mid-stream market segments. Based in the United Kingdom, Steve also heads up the Automation Team and manages the product portfolio of ABB Automation System. Steve has a BSc(Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.