Mark returns from lunch and turns on his monitor. He logs into his SensorUp dashboard and sees a notification of a new incident report. In the past 12 hours, two different sensors at two different sites have reported methane leaks.
The good news is that both were contained quickly, thanks to quick responses by the project manager and timely repairs by capable field workers.
If he wishes, Mark can dig deeper into the data behind these fugitive emission events, but his concern is bigger right now. He’s tuned in to the frequency of events like this and looking at the big picture. He’s developing a hypothesis about the failure rate of the company’s compressors that he wants to run by his team.
The SensorUp dashboard provides an integrated, real-time, 360° view of data across operations.
Data-backed decision-making for the C-Suite
In fact, it’s not so much a hypothesis as it is a data-driven decision. Mark is ready to make a very big decision. And he’s ready to make it confidently. He’s going to require the entire company to shift from running manual inspections to remote digital asset management.
At minimum, this is a 30% decrease in the frequency of manual inspections since identifying assets that are prone to failure, leaks and maintenance are now done using connected technology. On the surface, it looks like it will come at the expense of field technicians and Mark expects some resistance from some of his peers. But his business case is sound.
With the help of a team member from finance, he had some of his team run the financial calculations that show remote digital asset management is indeed working towards getting ahead of their Net Zero goals while optimizing teams in the field. Using the data collected from leak events dating back to when they started tracking them, they can now predict the frequency with which these events will continue to happen and ultimately prevent them altogether.
Using AI to make better predictions about the future
Responding to emergency fugitive emissions events is bad for the environment, it can run the company afoul of their environmental compliance, and it has hard costs associated with the labor. The business case for the increase in inspections, in other words, is airtight.
The cost of the additional expenses is already more than offset by the cost of the deadline with these events retroactively. In fact, the savings are quite significant, and they only started collecting this kind of data 9 months previously.
The C-Suite and field workers are connected with an information exchange ecosystem, made possible by the SensorUp Connected Work Platform.
From oil fields to spreadsheet fields, a complete picture of business operations
In the first part of this series, we experienced the leak event through the eyes of the connected worker. The technician gets dispatched to a specific location to analyze, report and repair. In part two, a project manager responds to the initial alert, choosing exactly which technician to send and monitoring his progress.
By the time we get here to view the same event from the C-suite, the urgency created is all but gone. A mere 9 months after bringing all their sensor data in one platform, events like this have become routine. The playbook for dealing with them is well-written and field teams are more informed and efficient than ever.
During that time, Mark has gone from having massive blind spots, to having near end-to-end visibility into the company operations.
New operational efficiencies, with continuous improvement
This is not the first time Mark has been able to make a policy decision confidently and it won’t be the last. As their system continues to collect data, they will become even more efficient in the ways they build, maintain, and plan end-of-life for their equipment and infrastructure.
This new level of connectivity has also helped them attract a new generation of talent, one that has grown up with technology and is comfortable viewing schematics and repair manuals on their mobile device. The company’s workforce isn’t as large as it was a decade ago, but they operate much more efficiently than they did in the past.
One of the biggest areas of improvement, aside from the ability to track assets in real time, has been the speed of knowledge transfer. It wasn’t many years ago that the company still recorded all of its readings in the field on paper, only to be entered into an office laptop later in the day (or even week). Without timely data, they were never really sure about their current status. And without the ability to properly analyze the data they collected, they weren’t able to see the big picture.
Removing friction in the field with connected work
The SensorUp Connected Worker Platform on Mark’s desk and that of his team, along with the SensorHub mobile application on the phones of the teams in the field, are what make the company’s newfound visibility possible. The platform interconnects the data from their various sensors, detecting leaks, monitoring the movement of assets, and responding to the inputs from field workers.
In this three-part scenario, we witnessed how stakeholders at all levels of the organization can benefit from a connected worker strategy.
In regulated industries like oil and gas, energy, and logistics, it’s often necessary to collect and record this kind of data accurately, to remain compliant with regulations and audits.
Improve first-visit resolution by arming employees with the best-in-class mobile solution. Built to be offline, SensorHub presents information in a clean and intuitive user interface enabling your workforce with the latest information they need to easily complete every job accurately and on time.
If you’re interested in learning more about the SensorHub mobile app and the SensorUp platform, contact us to schedule a live demo.
Larry Toube
VP of Product + User Experience
VP of Product + User Experience