There's no need to reach back into the early 1900s to realize the impact technology has had on both industry and individuals.
A time-traveler who worked as an operator in a refinery operation or petrochemical plant as recently as the 1960s would marvel at the use and advantage that digitization has upon efficiency today.
But that progress has not come free of challenges.
Chad Bates, asset supervisor for BASF, said one of the biggest challenges to introducing digital technology in his plant was getting his operators to embrace change.
"Nobody likes change," Bates said, discussing digitization of traditional reliability and maintenance at Downstream USA 2022 in Houston. "The operators saw that it was making their jobs easier. They didn't have to go to the computer, find a drive, find their reading sheets, print it out, go to the printer, get a clipboard and then go outside. All they have to do now is grab a tablet and go outside," Bates said. "That's the first thing that's easier. They hit one button on a little tablet and it pops up."
Bates said the system that BASF employs enables the operator to simply walk out the door with the tablet and begin their analysis of a problem. They check the first issue - perhaps a leak - that pops up onscreen.
"Then, the next piece of equipment is right there. It follows them through the unit in a symmetrical way. They make one round, so they're not going up and down the structure or back and forth," Bates said.
Bates emphasized the importance of buy-in among all users of the technology.
"You've got to have the buy-in. If you don't have the buy-in from the operators, it's hard," he said. "It's got to be built right because you can have all the tools in the world, but if you're not making them user-friendly, they're not going to like it."
Ken Stevens, asset health and management consultant for 4 Atmos Technologies, said he agrees with Bates' assessment of the importance of buy-in from all levels of the organization.
"The journey needs to start small to get that buy-in from the operating team and the maintenance team," he said. "Start small, experiment, get some innovation and buy-in. Then, measure the results and share that with your leadership."
Workers need to see that tablets and similar tools help them do their jobs more efficiently and that technology is not going to take away their jobs, Stevens said.
"Technology does improve efficiency," he continued. "If you've got the buy-in with your organization and you're willing to experiment, you can do lots of great things."
Hopefully, Stevens said, that initial acceptance will lead to "bigger buy-in" from supervisors and managers.
Bates also touted the importance of helping workers and leaders fully understand the "value-added" advantage of digitization.
"Can your managers and the people above you see that they're getting a return on investment of this equipment that you are using?" Bates asked. "If you can't show that within a year, you can pretty much forget it because it's going to be scrapped.
"In our unit, operators bought into it even though we didn't think that they would, but the operators loved it. When they can see that they're writing up stuff and maintenance is fixing it, it gives them ownership of the plant. If they feel that their voices are being heard, they are going to be more motivated to go out there and find stuff," Bates said.
The human factor
Despite the popularity and efficiency that comes with digitization, Bates said "the human factor" continues to be irreplaceable, even when it appears that humans may be lax in their duties.
"Every month, we do a deep dive in our staff meeting on downtime. We check the 'bad actors' and we can see exactly what's causing downtime in our unit, and everything just ties in together."
But, Bates insisted, data is useless without having "the right people" in place to monitor and interpret it.
"No matter what you do, you have to have the human factor involved because if you collect all of this data but no one is looking at it, then it's not worth 'a hill of beans.' When you have someone monitoring it and reporting it so everybody else can visualize it, that's when you can start making changes to your process. That's value added," he said.
