Audny van Helden (Shell) argued that the evolving energy scene means that digital technology is necessary to optimize diverse energy sources and usages. With regards to the energy transition, ‘the world is not moving fast enough to reach 1.5°’. Shell is doing its part and has joined the UN’s Race to Zero campaign and is to be a Net Zero company by 2050. The Climate Ambition Alliance also got a mention. van Helden introduced the Shell-SAP Sustainability Alliance, a ‘catalyst for accelerated decarbonization’. This is to be achieved by ‘advancing standards and transparency in GHG emissions’ and by providing digital solutions to drive sustainable business practices. Shell and SAP are to co-innovate on greenhouse gas emissions accounting solutions and supply chain management practices. The Alliance will ‘bring standards to life’ with (GHG) data for transparency and performance benchmarking. Such benchmarks will be translated into action through sector-specific decarbonization interventions and shared know-how, services and ultimately, products accessed through an (open) network. More on the Alliance here. van Helden also mentioned the Open Footprint Forum of which Shell is a founding member and where ‘we are working together to create a common model for footprint-related data covering all emission types, consumption, and base calculations to normalize and aggregate industry data’.
For an independent (?) assessment of Shell’s (and others’) progress in decarbonizing visit the ClimateAction100 website.
David Slack presented Chevron’s ‘Digital Core’ strategy and the advent of a cloud-based SAP S4/HANA system. Chevron’s current situation is deploys ‘overly complex enterprise technologies that are slow to update, function on disconnected data and widely varying processes’. The aim is to replace these with a streamlined digital foundation using the cloud-based SAP S4/HANA system with core, common data and processes. The new system will replaces 11 existing ERP systems and add new capabilities like mobility and a modern user interface. The Digital Core will standardize business processes, data and technology at the enterprise, segment and business unit levels. Last year the situation was evaluated using Celonis process mining to identify improvement opportunities. Prometheus scheduling, a web-based visual scheduler for planning and maintenance was also selected as providing a connection to Maximo. Release 1 is scheduled for delivery in 2023 and will include some 92 SAP processes and leverage an equipment master data cleansed to a new Chevron enterprise data standard (ISO14224). Ultimately, R3/4 (2026 on) will embed 488 SAP processes across up, mid and downstream. The development involves juggling between SAP-standard functionality and Chevron-specific developments with regular Chevron and SAP meetings en route! The approach is to adopt industry standard business processes as a first choice, then ‘drive innovation’ with the engagement of SAP product teams and customer groups. Further down the line the expectation is that Chevron-specific extensions will integrate the standard product roadmap, ‘intercepting the future (SAP) standard’. Slack concluded that ‘there is no S/4 out-of-the-box playbook available either from a system integrator or from SAP on executing a fit-to-standard/detailed design’. Chevron advises including SAP as part of the project team to address process gaps in the S/4 roadmap and to advise on complex design and alignment. A focus on oil and gas data standards is also key along with data governance and data management best practices. Chevron has developed a data object map defining ownership, business rules, data hierarchy and metrics. The project leveraged a Scaled/Agile approach, although Slack described adopting this framework as ‘hard’.
James Veale, founder of GreenToken* observed that companies do not have visibility into the origin of materials and the extent they are truly sustainable. Traceability for (continuously) commingled and bulk-traded materials requires a novel approaches. Keeping track of mass balance at scale is onerous because of product conversions, yield losses and multiple locations. Reporting needs for certification standards like ISCC are complex and time consuming. Enter GreenToken, both a SaaS-based network solution for end-to-end traceability and a stand-alone tool for mass balance accounting and certification. The solution leverages an immutable blockchain of custody across multiple business partners. More in the White Paper. Veale reported take up in chemicals from BASF, Eastman, Mitsubishi and others.
* GreenToken, officially GreenToken by SAP was founded when SAP opened up its SAP.io venture capital arm to internal employees. Veales’s team applied for funding in 2019 with a ‘ComTrace’ proposal out of which GreenToken was born.We naturally challenged Veale on the pertinence of blockchain in the supply chain which resulted an fruitful email exchange which we will report on in our next issue.
Peter Saling and Alessandro Pistillo presented on BASF’s approach to emissions tracking. The ISO 14067:2018 standard defines the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) as the life cycle GHG emissions of a product, further leveraging ISO14040:2006 and 14044:2006 life cycle assessment standards. The GHG Protocol Product Standard from the World Resources Institute also ran. From these BASF has developed a digital solution to determine PCFs ‘at scale’. The solution uses primary source data rather than industry averages or benchmarks. BASF has leveraged a ’a wealth of LCA expertise’ to calculate PCF in an ‘efficient, automatic and consistent fashion’. All of which has been embedded in the Strategic CO2Transparency Tool. SCOTT provides cradle-to-gate PCFs using an open shared methodology developed for the TfS1 Together for Sustainability consortium . While developing the methodology, BASF noted that upstream inputs to the chemicals industry, in particular crude oil emission factors were in need of improvement. Currently these are ‘very uncertain’ and probably too low by a factor of 2-3 times. Flaring, venting, transports, spills etc. ‘are not well addressed’. ‘Reliable, updated and meaningful data for energy and feedstock production are needed as key element of PCF calculation of chemicals leading to GHG reductions in the supply chain’. There is an urgent need for high quality, detailed, primary data for oil, gas and refinery products and processes. A ‘call to action’ was issues to oils to generate and provide these data!
BASF’s SCOTT was a winner in the 2021 Cefic Responsible Care Awards 2021 in Category 3: ‘En route to climate neutrality’. The team got a pat on the back from Martin Brudermüller, Cefic President and CEO of … BASF. Incidentally there was no mention of GreenToken or the Open Footprint Forum.
Evert Ruijs presented Shell’s NextGen ERP upstream/integrated gas ‘asset digital core’ along with Peter Aynsley-Hartwell (Utopia Global). The project involved the addition of master data governance to Shell’s ‘Asset Digital Core’. MDM is designed to eliminate duplicate data entry, manual handling and custom scripts and different practices across the ERP landscape. The vision is for data governance best practices enabled by ‘out of the box’ automation. Critical data will be supported by SAP MDG. MDG-EAM from Utopia was also selected as part of the landscape. Utopia’s approach to data is ‘get it clean and keep it clean’. Asset data is extracted from legacy systems, documents and drawings, cleansed and enriched with ISO 14224-compliant asset data. MRO spare parts is the first priority. The SAP Asset Information Workbench (also from Utopia) also ran. Once a complete set of asset master data has been loaded, the system will be used to synchronize engineering and S/4 asset master data during ongoing plant modifications. OpenText Extended ECM for Engineering and the SAP Asset Intelligence Network are also involved.
SAP’s Hisham Gouda reported that productivity in manufacturing was up 70% in the period 1995 to 2011 (time to refresh the data?).
In construction productivity remained flat. The lessons learned in
product lifecycle management (PLM) are now to be applied to
construction. The missing piece of the puzzle was an IT system for
Capital Projects. This is now being rectified with a joint venture
between SAP and Siemens which will see Siemen’s PLM hooked up to the SAP digital twin. Construction design and build will leverage Siemens Teamcenter
for capital asset lifecycle management and on handover, operations will
transfer to SAP which ‘manages the entire asset lifecycle from creation
to decommissioning’. A digital handover process promises ‘quick and
traceable’ digital issue management, providing visibility and metrics
of build progress. CFIHOS got a mention.More in the 2021 press release.
Yngve Karlsen described Aker BP’s journey to SAP S/4 HANA. This was a big program to replace multiple legacy systems acquired during mergers. One issue was that standard SAP data forms proved hard to use by field workers. These have been replaced with simplified GUIs and a dedicated app for approvals of invoices, requisitions and PO’s. Only relevant information shown to the end users and the interface offers approve, reject or forward buttons only. Another app has been developed for requisitioning with logic implemented to avoid ‘unwanted’ purchases. This has resulted in happy users and less time spent on support and administration. Inspired by these developments, Aker BP users realized that there was potential for improvement in other processes with missing functionality bridged by custom apps. Expensive side systems and add-ons are being replaced by customized Fiori apps. Aker BP is now planning to replace extensive Excel usage with Fiori applications to standardize processes and improve data quality. Overall the goal is to offer a modern GUI that give the information the user needs to perform a task and reduces clutter. Data quality is improved by removing options that do not follow the process. The only drawback is that experienced SAP GUI users are hard to bring into the new world.
Stephane Lauzon (SAP) presented the SAP Cloud for Field Logistics. This was developed with input from the SAP Upstream Oil and Gas Consortium, a user group that includes BP, Chevron, Equinor, Inpex, Repsol and Shell. The Consortium is the custodian of the ‘market-standard scope’ (of SAP), reviewing innovation priorities and acting as early adopters of new cloud services. Of which, the Field Logistics offering is currently at ‘Labs Preview’ stage and is subject to change. FL provides support for field work orchestration and automation, and is Fiori-enabled for use with mobile devices. The system scans and tracks non-stock, rental and third party items and covers returns process and tracking. A machine learning function provides container ID/OCR recognition. BlueOpex by IntCom got a plug, as a ‘people/logistics solution for assembling teams and planning shifts’.
Next year’s TA Cook/SAP International SAP Conference for Oil, Gas and Energy will be held from 18–20 April 2023 in Basel, Switzerland.
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