IBM has announced that HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL), a joint venture between Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited and Mittal Energy Investments, Singapore, has selected IBM as its strategic partner in the design and implementation of a state-of-the-art Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for their zero residue refinery.
HMEL is investing more than US$4 billion to build the green refinery, which will be able to process 180,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Through the 1.5 years, multi-million dollar agreement, IBM will integrate all of HMEL’s operations, ranging from manufacturing to marketing and distribution. Having a single, unified view of business operations and access to real-time information across all systems will help HMEL operate the new refinery with maximum efficiency and return on investments, and improve decision making in such areas as energy and quality management, planning and scheduling, trade and risk management, and physical security.
"It is critical for HMEL to establish processes that help the company get a single, comprehensive view of its operations and also bring in greater efficiency into the system," said Richard Dirckx, Vice-President (Operations), HMEL. "IBM understood our needs and has the global expertise, knowledge repositories of leading practices, processes and key performance indicators to support our goal of becoming one of the smartest refineries in the world. In fact, HMEL will be among only a handful of refineries to start operations with the full suite of MES applications."
"It is an exciting opportunity for IBM to work with HMEL and help them in this key project," said Vanitha Narayanan, Managing Partner, Global Business Services, IBM India/South Asia. "We strongly believe that with our domain experts and global experience, we will help HMEL transform the way information is gathered, combined and analyzed. The best-of-breed solutions approach will help them discover new ways to improve production efficiencies and be among the best refineries globally creating a true smarter refinery," said Vanitha.
