The cost of distractions in life is high. What can often seem like a minor distraction can have a giant impact on life; a distracted drive to work could cause a crash, distracted while reading email could cause you to miss an important request from the boss, or being distracted while spending time with family could result in a loved one that doesn’t feel heard anymore, or think you care.

When it comes to your operations distractions can cause just as much havoc and loss. Distractions cause the risk of safety of people; and the environments around you, and the health of the bottom line. Those distractions could be losing your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars. Without your eye on the prize you could be risking the sustainability of your organization; here today - gone tomorrow happens all too often these days.

 

 

Keeping your operations continuously running smoothly is no small task; but especially if it involves remotely located assets that are hundreds, even thousands of miles from where you work on a daily basis. You don't have the same amount of talented skilled people to be sending them all over the countryside for no good reason anymore. You need to know exactly what's going on, and where before you can even think about scheduling one of your valuable resources to hit the road, jump on a flight or work all that overtime to get to the asset in need.

 

 

 

You've probably encountered the pain of trying to set up something that you thought was going to be easy and only take a few minutes. It stated it was 'easy' to set up, and of course you're pretty bright so how hard could it really be? And then you open the box... You see more wires, parts, and pieces stuffed in there than SpaceX probably uses to build rockets.

Your heart sinks a bit, your blood pressure instantly rises and you can feel your eyes trying to make sense of the clutter and not knowing what to focus on. Your brain tells you to quickly close that box, and RUN screaming from the room!

 

Our expert IIoT platform developers have had another productive year of making our SaaS suite, security and the platform it all lives on it's very best with impactful updates, patches, security changes and development. Here are a few of our favorite updates from 2022 - we hope you agree!

 

 

For gas regulators, the need to replace IT systems can be for various reasons. Their system no longer serves their business operations, wants to launch new initiatives, or unexpected events make them re-evaluate the need for a reliable backup system.

According to local power companies, more than 4.4 million customers were without power in the winter of 2021 deep freeze in Houston, Texas. Cold weather shut natural gas production and pipelines, which refineries use in power generation. Widespread power outages and instability of external power supply forced shutdowns across the state.

 

 

So you’ve installed sensors and remote controls all through your operations and your facilities; both near the office and far, far away from anything and anyone.

Great start! But, you may be asking yourself; now what?

Let us show you what you've really got - It's a bit like buying a new sporty convertible car and then taking it out for a drive for the first time. The new car smell is still fresh and you aren't totally sure how it handles, how to put the top down, what it can do for acceleration or (more importantly) how fast it can stop; but you really, really want to find out!

You’re ready to see what it can really do, and it’s the same for digital technology. With those sensors and remote systems installed, now it can give you a lot of actionable data that can reduce downtime, boost profits and enable your employees to be more efficient. Let's show you want this engine's really got in it!

 

While the benefits of digitally transforming your operations are well known—improved assets, reduced overhead, better data flow and greater safety—deciding whether or not, and how to get started can be daunting, to say the least. To jump from totally manual operations to a digital transformation journey could indeed be over the top, especially for a small to medium-sized company that often have people wearing many hats and already a plate that is overflowing with responsibilities, and extreme stress.

Your digital transformation journey, is just that; it's your journey! You can take that trip any way, on any time-frame and budget that makes sense to your operations. It can be made in baby steps, or giant leaps and bounds. You can take it a bit at a time and at your own pace, or if you're ready to put the pedal to the metal we can handle that too. But, we know every operations is at a different step on their journey, and what might feel right-sized to one operations may feel like wearing your pants on backwards to others.

 

 

When your work requires a plentiful flow of liquids stored in tanks, you need to monitor those levels to keep them from getting empty. Here’s how we helped a customer do that across their whole territory.

In Pennsylvania we have a great Customer who provides lubricants such as oils for gear assemblies and other industrial applications. Often, deliveries were initiated by a customer calling in to report an empty tank and requesting an immediate delivery, which could be on a weekend. While happy to oblige, our client needed a more predictable and efficient procedure for planning delivery routes.

Already using Emerson’s Rosemount^TM system to monitor their own tank levels, they needed to create alarms there—and they were looking to monitor and alarm client tanks as well. We were excited about the opportunity to add Emerson's DeltaV SaaS SCADA with Tank Protect and Alarm Management Services to the mix.

 

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” doesn’t begin to describe winters in Wyoming, Alberta and many other parts of the world. Winter lows average well below zero, whatever scale you’re using. It’s why detailed training, safety, planning and teamwork are literally life-and-death issues as we help keep water, wastewater, gas distribution, and of course oil and gas production flowing - in even the coldest, and hottest areas of the globe.

Ask anyone that works outside in temps around 110 degrees in the complete dust and heat of summer in the Texas, or well below zero in Canada - no one leaves the yard without extensive training, preparation, and a carefully checked list, but there are still many, many safety risks to consider before venturing out.

 

When we decide to integrate new features into our cloud-native DeltaV SaaS SCADA, we carefully analyze how features will benefit you in improving your operations.

Recently we had a customer looking for a cloud-based platform that could accurately monitor their tank inventory levels and their own customers inventory levels, which they are responsible for keeping full.

Building on their strategy to transform their business digitally meant understanding their business needs today to prepare for tomorrow. Our customer required accessible tank data to reduce site visits, increase safety, uptime, and profitability.