BPCL invests Rs 4.5 cr in asset integrity management system

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) has implemented the Meridium asset integrity management system at its refineries in Kochi and Mumbai.

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“BPCL is the first Indian refinery to have implemented such a system,” says MD Agrawal, deputy general manager – IS (Refinery), at BPCL. The Meridium asset integrity management system at BPCL is an SQL-based application implemented by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). BPCL signed the deal after evaluating bids from seven vendors, including TCS.

Need for an asset integrity management system

The asset integrity management system at BPCL maintains the life history of each asset in the refinery. For instance, the system can monitor and maintain detailed histories of each boiler, including its cost of procurement, level of performance, maintenance requirements, and so on. Moreover, every time an asset is likely to experience a breakdown, the asset integrity management system issues an advance warning to the relevant officials in the refinery.

In a refinery, there are two types of notification: for maintenance and for inspection. “Prior to the implementation of the Meridium asset integrity management system, the asset management function was integrated with SAP ERP, and SAP, in turn, used to send out those notifications. But the old system failed to monitor and show the action taken based on the notifications,” says Agrawal, explaining the need for the new system.

The Meridium asset integrity management system maintains records of the assets being inspected, archives the inspection reports, and generates a business analytic report based on historic data.

Project details

BPCL kick-started the asset integrity management project in August 2008 and completed it last month. The company had allocated Rs 4.5 crore for the two refineries towards this project. “Since we implemented the solution at the Mumbai and Kochi refineries simultaneously, we could ensure version integrity and standardization of hardware platform infrastructure at both places. The access provided to the asset integrity management system is akin to a private cloud infrastructure,” says Agrawal.

Implementation road map

BPCL intends to replicate the asset integrity management system implementation at other locations.“As our hardware infrastructure is ready, we will now have to pay only for the additional software licenses. Another cost will be that of services. But since our staff has already been trained on this solution, about 50% of services will provided by internal teams, thus further ensuring cost savings for BPCL,” Agrawal says.