According to Colin Xander, executive director of turnarounds for Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem), the difference between digitalization and digital transformation is becoming increasingly important throughout all categories of industry.
Many companies, he noted, are "doing things like building electronics systems" to replace handwritten reports, for example.
"That's great and it's a big improvement, but that's not digital transformation," Xander
said. "Digital transformation is your bills automatically being paid. You don't have to [physically] pay those anymore. You can analyze where you're spending to cost."
Xander noted how digital transformation -- or lack thereof -- can impact numerous company stakeholders, including contractors, turnaround managers and owners.
"The contractor is a guy in the field who might also work at Exxon and CPChem and Valero and all these different companies. He comes to your plant and he's a pipefitting expert, but he doesn't know your plant," Xander said at the Downstream Virtual Conference and Exhibition presented recently by Petrochemical Update (Reuters Events). "He's going to work on something, but if he's got a question about the torque spec or the torque pattern or something like that, he's got to stop and find somebody with the company's name on his shirt and say, 'Hey, what do I do here?'"
If that contractor is familiar with the company's digital transformation tools, Xander continued, "he can link right to [the] engineering shared drive and be able to get that detailed information in the palm of his hand. That makes his work so much easier, and he can be so much more efficient. It can be such a game-changer and an opportunity for the contractor."
For the turnaround manager, Xander said, the opportunity provided by digital transformation is equally significant.
"Instead of being in a situation where every day at one o'clock you have a scheduled update, you've already got the update. I can see it live without having a scheduled strategy meeting where we sit around and [ask], 'Why have we not closed that vessel yet? Why have we not finished this weld yet?'" Xander said. "That's a game-changer for me."
Xander reasoned that owners who are making an investment in a company's product rightfully question the influence of digital transformation on their return on investment.
"Are they getting days off the schedule? Are they getting fewer people, less safety risk?" Xander asked. "It really is a win for each of the organizations if it's done right."
A culture of participation
Billy Bardin, global digitization director for Dow Chemical, specified what organizations can do to bridge the gap between "the vision and the reality" and give more meaning to their corporate strategies.
"That's a very challenging question and very much related to the individual culture of the company," Bardin said. "You have to have the involvement and the initial buy-in of all those individuals who are involved in deploying and making the technology successful."
A number of individual groups and stakeholders are required to reach this goal, Bardin said.
"We try to set the broad, strategic objectives we're trying to solve and address. We try to improve our competitive position," he explained. "And then we let the sites innovate in those specific areas and allow them to come up with their ideas."