Kioge-2022
NCOC Brings Digital Solutions to Operators’ Work
NCOC as one of the major oil producers in Kazakhstan is interested in continuous improvement of the safety and situational awareness of operators in the field. Operator rounds and maintenance inspections in oil & gas industry play an essential role in improving plant reliability and safety. Replacing paper checklists with digital technology has enormous potential in terms of better analysis and management of data. Paper based work is challenging since the paper records are not easily accessible and hard to read, which could lead to incorrect decisions from outdated, inconsistent, or incorrect data.
Nowadays in NCOC the information necessary for making situational decisions on the spot is received by workers using mobile devices at site area. In addition to communication tools, operators on the field have access to all the detailed information about the procedure for operating and maintaining plants and equipment. Additionally, all operator rounds in field area are done using an in-house developed program called Operator Task Management (OTM).
OTM is the tool developed by NCOC IT/IM team to perform routine round checklists on mobile devices to improve reporting capabilities of Safe Production Operations team, and to increase operational awareness of performed tasks in field area. The program has come to replace the paperwork of operators as an effective system for managing operational processes. It helps Operations department ensure that best operating and regulatory procedures are consistently followed, to collect data from the non-instrumented assets, and to conduct critical plant environmental and safety audits.
OTM is a mobile application which includes an explosion-proof mobile device with a mobile application, through which field operators receive so called logsheets with required tasks. The system does not require a permanent connection to the network, thus operators can fill in the data even if there is no Internet. Further, as the operator completes the round, the system automatically synchronizes the device with the OTM database and all data received during the round will be available in the web version of the application.
Moreover, OTM system makes an automatic report on exceeded indicators and on the workload of field operators, thereby ensuring the sequence of actions to perform helping to manage production processes and solve common problems of the company. Equipment condition data such as vibration, temperature and pressure are easily collected by field operators using the mobile solution during their regular rounds in the field. Each task allows operators to leave necessary comments and images, which speeds up problem resolution. In addition, each sensor has a set warning threshold, and if the actual parameter values exceed the allowable limits, then the management and engineer automatically receives a report on the exceeded values for further study and recommendations.
NCOC effectively monitors abandoned or unequipped enterprise assets with OTM and, using a Data centric approach, creates an overall history of assets giving a comprehensive view of asset performance and health. The decision to introduce OTM came from a feasibility study of similar solutions in the market, where different operator round systems were analyzed that were available on the market
In just three months, IT team provided customers with a pilot version of the product, which was successful, but still required some improvements. The software improvement was made together with the end users at the Bolashak plant, who continuously tested the new version of the product and gave their meaningful feedback. Finally, after 5 months of work, the main functions of the system were ready for use. It took another 3 months to run additional checks to identify stale data and 2 months to conduct the necessary training for end users.
Nevertheless, the work that took almost a year was worth the effort because the value of the product is justified by several specific benefits. Once OTM system went live, he OTM value analysis was conducted, which showed the following benefits:
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Avoid paperwork resulting in savings on paper and printing services, reducing storage consumption for email attachments.
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Instant filtering of manually collected data, minimizing input errors.
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A single data collection unit to provide data to engineers for further analysis.
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Compliance report for all assets with built-in process controls.
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Ability to view the schedule of operators to track productivity.
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Improved communication with teams at the plant.
Overall, the OTM system implementation provided employees with proper tools to work more efficiently, while its implementation with internal resources saved costs and demonstrated the potential of our professionals. Moreover, such examples encourage the entire organization to continue its digital transformation journey and build a digital culture which is crucial for sustainable and continuous development of the company.