TechnipFMC Uses Accenture to Provide Oil Field Equipment Intelligence and Remote Visibility

Energy technology provider TechnipFMC knows that turning brownfields into smart fields is the future of the energy industry. By using artificial intelligence (AI) to gain insights into remote operations, energy companies can operate more sustainably and cost efficiently, as well as use predictive analytics to fix issues before they become bigger problems. To support its customers in the oil industry as they achieve the smart fields of tomorrow, TechnipFMC needed to be able to deliver completely integrated technology solutions that empower companies to both automate their equipment and monitor their health and performance.

The solution turned out to be Cerebra, an AI solution from Accenture Decision Sciences and Analytics (Accenture). Cerebra provides operator access to near-real-time job performance information, equipment health information, automated reporting tools, and much more. By customizing Cerebra instead of building a solution from scratch, TechnipFMC could more quickly achieve the analytics capabilities required to deliver oil production equipment intelligence to its customers.

Delivering insights to the oil fields using AWS

Accenture, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner and AWS Independent Software Vendor (AWS ISV), uses AI to improve asset uptime and operational efficiency for industrial companies. “In building our flagship product Cerebra, we wanted to merge the two worlds of engineering and data science so that industrial engineers can easily get the insights they need to solve problems out in the field,” says Jigar Doshi, principal consultant at Accenture.

To run and scale Cerebra, Accenture utilizes various AWS services, including Amazon EMR, a solution for rapidly processing, analyzing, and applying machine learning (ML) to big data using open-source frameworks. The company also utilizes Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (Amazon MSK), a fully-managed, highly-available Apache Kafka service for secure data streaming, to maintain low overhead costs.

After customizing Cerebra for the unique needs of the energy industry, Accenture and TechnipFMC needed a flexible way to meet demand for the solution. Using AWS services, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud, Accenture and TechnipFMC can scale their analytics solution as their needs grow.

“Using AWS, we have the scale of the infrastructure that we need to expand practically without limits,” says Andrew Cappello, director of digital control and automation at TechnipFMC.

Providing remote visibility from anywhere

TechnipFMC worked alongside Accenture to integrate Cerebra with TechnipFMC’s existing technology solutions. The result was InsiteX, a cloud environment offering the AI capabilities that oil companies need to monitor their equipment and streamline their processes. By utilizing InsiteX, TechnipFMC’s customers can achieve early anomaly detection and diagnostics models, near-real-time reporting, and last-mile visibility into their operations.

One goal behind developing InsiteX was to empower customers’ operations teams to remotely monitor production sites. Reducing trips to the field not only saves time but also improves worker safety. By utilizing InsiteX, which is supported by AWS global availability, operations teams can remotely achieve visibility using any device. There’s no need for on-premises servers, designated devices, or special software. “Workers now have the ability to take action from wherever they are,” says Cappello.

Now that they have immediate visibility into equipment health and performance, oil companies can act quickly to detect and remediate problems before they cause downtime. For example, customers can scan their equipment for methane gas leaks, and then take steps to reduce their greenhouse gas footprint. Furthermore, they can use equipment intelligence to discover ways to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs.

Supporting data at high volumes

TechnipFMC also saves time, labor, and resources using Accenture. In the past, the company developed custom-built solutions for each customer. Now, it utilizes standardized building blocks that can be configured and deployed at scale. Moreover, because it developed InsiteX in the cloud, TechnipFMC can support data at high volumes. For example, it can serve a production facility with 20,000 data points updating every few seconds just as simply as it can handle a small data stream.

Now that it has achieved integrated surface technologies that use the power of AI to deliver timely intelligence, TechnipFMC plans to proceed with its digital transformation. Accenture will continue to work alongside TechnipFMC and utilize AWS to build innovative solutions for the energy industry.

“There’s a huge opportunity to use this solution to empower thousands of other industrial engineers in oil fields around the world,” says Doshi.