Companies are driving innovation with field connectivity – panel

HOUSTON (ICIS)–Operations and engineering leaders at major industrial companies said during a panel discussion on Thursday that a digitally connected workforce is driving innovation and efficiency through the increased ability to make data-driven decisions.

On the third day of the Reuters USA Downstream virtual conference, David Reed, director, plant services division at Eastman Chemical, moderated the panel, all of whom largely agreed that technological advances and a better understanding of how to best use that tech is increasing efficiency by enabling workers to utilize information on site.

Panelist Cindy Gross, corporate principal, fixed equipment engineering with Ascend Performance Materials, said connectivity is becoming more cost effective now that the sensors used to digitally monitor systems are becoming more affordable.

“It is an exciting time in the industry as these costs are coming down,” she said. “To be able to apply instrument readings where in the past it was cost-prohibitive, but with the new sensors it has been an advantage.”

David Griffin, senior director, connected worker at Honeywell, agreed.

“There are going to be many cases where it simply does not make sense from an investment standpoint to sensor certain pieces of equipment, so if we are able to provide digital tools to the fieldworkers that are responsible for that maintenance and inspection of that equipment, it gives us a much easier ability to actually capture that data in a more meaningful way, even if it is human-captured data it can still be integrated back into the same systems to provide useful information,” he said.

But connectivity, or the availability of Wi-Fi on sites, is vital, according to panelist Russell Epperly, senior project controls manager at Zachry.

“You can’t have a connected worker if you don’t have connectivity – meaning Wi-Fi,” he said. “For us, as a contractor, it is very important that a facility or a site has that. Once we have it, allowing everyone to share and use it is the next thing. It allows to us bring in our tools and the things we use to help measure our work and our performance.”

“If you are on an outage or turnaround event, time is money,” Epperly added. “So that is where we see the benefit in being connected.”

One issue surrounding the use of devices at plants are Class 1, Division 1 areas where ignitable concentrations of flammable gases, vapors or liquids are present continuously or for long periods of time under normal operating conditions.

Plants have instituted intrinsic safety measures, which are protection techniques for safe operation of electrical equipment in hazardous areas by limiting the energy, electrical and thermal, available for ignition.

Epperly said he thinks the industry probably needs to take a look at modifying or updating those guidelines.

“When you have mobile devices, and you have to put them in an intrinsically safe case, that pretty much doubles the cost of having that device,” he said. “If customers and the sites can go and evaluate and look at the parameters on where you can or cannot allow these devices, I think would go a long way to having the worker connected to all of this information.”

Gross said she sees the possibility of the industry pivoting on this issue.

“I think you will see a pivot in the industry where the classifications for Class 1 Division 1 get much smaller,” she said. “That allows us to bring the phones and electronic devices in.”

The panelists agreed generally that the technology advances allow for better monitoring of worker productivity, but also helped improve employee attraction and retention.

“The industrial world is not immune to all of the employment challenges that we are seeing in our everyday lives, and providing these types of tools are allowing employees to be more productive and it is really useful for everyone,” Griffin said.

The Reuters Downstream USA 2021 conference continues virtually through Friday, and in person on 21-22 October at the NRG Center, Conference and Exhibition, in Houston, Texas.