COVID-19 has proven the importance of digitalization and we must remember that it is not just a survival tactic but an important ingredient for future growth of the chemical and petrochemical industry, believes Partha Sur, General Manager - Technology, Haldia Petrochemicals Limited.

“There is a lot of data hanging around and how an organization makes sense out of it, is very important. Different departments and business functions must be aligned together and its necessity must be understood well. After that a proper brainstorming should be done to identify a project and ways to complete it and show learning and value from it. Once it is done, it gives a very good momentum to run many other projects. In our industry, there are many opportunities. High cost of energy is a compulsion for South Asia to find solutions besides every moment we lose in manufacturing is a lost opportunity. That kind of metrics and putting people along is fine but next is the selection of technology which should be sustainable. Process safety is one of the biggest challenges and it has taken a few bad safety incidents to shake the industry. While optimization and monitoring is complex, we need to tie them up together to bring in a lot of discipline and reliability through various digital initiatives," added Sur.

Partha Sur expressed his views alongside other experts while discussing the importance of adopting digitalization at the ‘NextGen Chemical and Petrochemical Summit 2021’ organized by Indian Chemical News from 7-8 October, 2021. Titled as ‘‘Digitalization and Industry 4.0: Accelerating its pace’, the opening panel discussion on the first day of the virtual summit was moderated by Pravin Prashant, Editor, Indian Chemical News.

“We need to see that connecting machines using Internet of Things (IoT) based platforms are on track from a digitalization perspective. This track has to go a bit faster than the speed followed by industry previously. The important point is that we are only capturing process data but improving the quality of analytics. Another challenge that needs to be addressed is bringing in more data scientists on board to boost the quality of analysis drastically. The kind of issues such as changes in coal prices and availability can be dealt with through predictions so that companies can optimize their use. Apart from this stated role of digitalization, automation is very much required. A few times there are negative connotations around the term such as loss of jobs but in reality we move the resources to skilled jobs while basic jobs get automated. It has supported our growth journey in better ways,” says Bimal Puri, Vice President & CIO, SRF Technical Textiles.

“The whole COVID-19 scenario has accelerated digital adoption. By that I don’t mean the video collaboration and other digital means to work remotely but adoption of technologies such as IoT and digital twins. We have seen exponential adoption in our company. We have a diversified portfolio including chemicals, pharma, industrial gases, and medical products. Many of these products come under essential supplies and we had to operate 24X7 to ensure the safety of people. Using IoT deployments, we were able to run our operations and maintain much needed business continuity. We could also drive equipment reliability based on data availability. With some data points, we were able to predict whether there will be failure of equipment or not. We are able to look after the various facilities and also maintain a tab on energy consumption. Comparatively, earlier it used to take days to collect the date individually from different units. It is clear that either we adopt or perish,” says Atul Govil, CTO & Head, India Glycols Limited.

“Two years back Indian Oil launched a large-scale digital transformation programme. Following that we created a Digital Centre of Excellence with our finest brains to implement the projects on the ground. Three pronged approaches were taken to do that: One was to bring value, deploy solutions, and enable change. This was a business oriented strategy to address the business problems. About 100+ initiatives are being implemented to rope in 10,000+ employees, also covering customers, supply chain. When we analyzed the opportunities in the oil and gas industry, analytics played a key role. With advanced analytics, we unlock the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to develop intricate simulations. For historical and real time data, we identified and prioritized our problems across and have solved them with cutting edge analytics. Through our focused approach, we have enhanced customer experience on the marketing side. From the refinery side, we have done unit optimization of multiple processes to build value. Digitalization has helped us in better decision making, manhours reduction among few things,” says Suresh Nambiar, CGM - Strategic Information Systems, Indian Oil Corporation Limited.

“The chemical companies often face volatility in the environment and a lot of uncertainties in the business. With the availability of different technologies, they are trying to maximize their achievements and reward their shareholders. As a digital technology facilitator, AspenTech is helping the customers in their digital journey by ensuring sustainability as well as safety and reliability. We are building a portfolio where we cover design, operations, maintenance, and sustainability of the plant. We bring domain expertise as well as AI/ML together to deliver engineering solutions and advanced process control. We have end to end solutions for customer’s self optimization journey, says Sunil Patil, Senior Director - Solution Consulting, APJ, AspenTech.

“Digitalization helps us move faster and come up with better processes. It enables us to analyze the data better and use it along with augmented intelligence. It is a combination of the latest techniques such as AI, ML, Data Analytics, and the traditional approach. AI/ML is applicable across various domains and processes. To make its best use, we need to translate the humongous data that is available. If we combine digital technology with traditional knowledge, there is tremendous improvement in production, yield, safety and sustainability. It doesn’t mean we are cutting down on jobs but slimming of jobs and moving them to better options. Dynamic benchmarking helps us to understand if we have done better with other options historically. To do it real-time gives us better benefits and has helped our customers. Immensely,” says Dr. Pratap Nair, President & CEO, Ingenero Technologies.

“Most of the companies are embarking on the massive digital transformation and the real opportunity lies with both vertical value chain and horizontal value chain. The success of solutions implemented in the last 10 years, whether it is production life cycle management, Industry 4.0, and the key part was data interoperability standards. One key challenge in the chemical industry is where to begin. The increased awareness of customers is making the companies go fast on this. Value comes from cultural integration and digitalization can’t be just limited to a core team but has to be adopted across all functions upto operator level. It is the new way of living which everybody has to adopt. Despite being inevitable, it depends on how companies choose to do it. Return on investment is the key question often asked by the companies but ignoring it for a long time won’t help. Understanding the roadmap and the right solutions is also critical,” says Praveen Kapse, Vice President - Global Strategy and Innovation, Tridiagonal Solutions.