Storage terminal play a key role in the supply chain of hydrocarbons from producers to consumers. The opportunity to improve operations through digital transformation initiatives is great.
In an Industrial Automation Asia article, Digital Transformation: Tanks and Terminals, Emerson’s Loren Sjoquist and Manuel Arroyo described some ways these tank farm facilities can drive improved operations.
When asked, “How can digital transformation help terminal operators achieve significant improvements in their performance metrics?”, they responded:
Digital transformation is a customer-owned strategy of integrating digital capabilities to improve project execution and operational performance. There are four main areas where digital transformation helps terminal operators to achieve operational excellence:
- Safety: Remove workers from high-risk activities like climbing tanks for manual readings, avoid product contamination and loss of primary containment, and reduce the number of recordable incidents.
- Capacity: Eliminate time-consuming manual processes that harm asset capacity, inventory turnover, custody transfer, terminal throughput, and revenue capture.
- Reliability: Employ technology to gain predictable asset availability, lower maintenance costs, and reduce risk due to equipment failure events.
- Energy: Use technology to become more sustainable by reducing energy consumption, emissions levels, and energy costs.
Loren and Manuel highlight the best way to get started in a digital transformation initiative by having a clear business case based on one or more of these main areas. It’s important to work closely with industry and technology experts to identify proven methods of success.
They highlight the example of using Emerson’s Digital Transformation Roadmap as a way to assess the current state of operations and identify a roadmap for driving improvements to top quartile performance.
Read the article for more on managing the people side of transformation efforts to fully take advantage of the technology improvements and how to sustain these improvements over time.
Visit the Storage Terminals section on Emerson.com for more on the technologies and solutions to support digital transformation efforts and top quartile performance.
