Baker Hughes, a GE company and KBC a wholly owned subsidiary of Yokogawa Electric Corporation, have announced a preferred partnership that will provide a combination of process simulation, asset performance management and operational software solutions to the oil and gas industry.

Leveraging GE’s Predix, the platform for the industrial internet, to deliver one unified view, this partnership extends KBC’s Petro-SIM process simulation modelling further into the fullstream oil and gas value chain, and provides connectivity between operations, assets, people and business processes for end-to-end optimisation.

Integrating KBC technology with BHGE’s suite of digital solutions will allow customers to reduce bottlenecks in facilities, processes and equipment to achieve optimal production and lower risk. By integrating data analytics connected by seamless workflows between facilities and operations, the time spent to analyse operations will be significantly reduced and the insight gained will increase production, reduce energy usage and improve product quality consistency.

“This partnership showcases our commitment to break down data “silos”, and is an ideal example of the convergence of process and operational thinking,” says Matthias Heilmann, Chief Digital Officer of BHGE. “For the first time, oil and gas customers can build a digital twin of a plant, refinery or rig, that incorporates end-to-end process and operational analytics and machine learning. With Petro-SIM providing simulation technology to our fullstream portfolio, this best-in-class solution will bring us into a new era of operational improvement.”

KBC’s Petro-SIM simulation technology already connects to cloud-based Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) data-as-a-service solutions to remotely monitor and help improve customers’ process operations. With full integration to commercial data historian and database systems, the KBC technology offers a central repository for process topology, and stream and equipment data, with access to live and historical plant operating data for performance monitoring. Asset Performance Management (APM) from GE enables intelligent asset strategies to help optimise performance to make operations safer by helping to predict and prevent failures. It can answer critical questions on the history and current operation of an asset, as well as provide an answer to what actions should be taken to improve performance, mitigate risk and ensure overall operational safety and efficiency.

The integration of KBC process simulation and models with BHGE analytics, digital twins, fullstream software and Predix provides real-time congruence between the digital and physical worlds. A plant digital twin, enabled by this partnership, would provide a complete view of all equipment, operations and processes, comparing actual performance to expected outcomes, and enabling predictive actions. This plant twin will also enable efficient workforce management, allowing personnel to focus on critical plant operations.

“This game-changing combination of KBC and BHGE will result in solutions for customers to quickly analyse problems and opportunities, and create insights that can then be turned into actions that will assure operational excellence, and sustainability, based on the Yokogawa approach of engaging in co-innovation with customers.” says Andy Howell, CEO of KBC. “Together we will deliver molecularly-enabled digital twins of assets across the fullstream from wellbore through pipeline networks, topsides, gas plants, refineries and petro-chemical plants.”

Tags: Baker Hughes a GE company (BHGE), Yokogawa Electric Corporation