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Saras Digitizes Oil Refinery Maintenance, Enhances Worker Safety and Productivity

As one of the largest refineries in the Mediterranean Sea, Saras holds about 300,000 barrels per day of refining capacity in addition to one of the largest liquid fuel gasification plants in the world. Additional activities of Saras include trading, marketing, generation of electricity from renewable sources, and industrial engineering services for the oil sector. 

The Challenge

Saras Digital is a company-wide digitization project started by Saras and their IT engineering team, Sartec. They began this project to boost their field workers’ productivity and increase safety on oil refinery maintenance tasks by introducing mobile applications into their day-to-day routine. In the downstream production world, mobile applications are rare due to two governing issues: The lack of network connectivity in locations where the mobile applications are needed, and, the requirement of safety certified, high-security devices that are approved by a governing body.

For these reasons, many oil refinery operations and other downstream product operations are not able to implement mobility into their processes, leaving field workers to perform nearly all tasks manually.

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The Approach

Saras partnered with Avvale to achieve their worker safety and productivity improvement goals while addressing the traditional challenges of downstream production operations. They adopted two basic mobility applications: Switchgear Assistant and Checklist Companion. Switchgear Assistant is a simple application that enhances safety on the industrial shop floor by automating the process of turning off power when a pump needs maintenance. The application works by scanning a QR code that triggers a workflow, which includes user authentication, pump identification, and pump status checks.

Checklist Companion is another application that enhances safety and efficiency for field workers in the refinery by supporting routine data collection on machinery and equipment. The application digitizes the data collection process by having workers scan the QR code on the machine before performing a maintenance check. This allows them to input data for the specific machine, which is immediately available to the control room. Workers can also view the maintenance record of the machine by scanning the QR code. Furthermore, even if workers are not connected to a network, they can continue to the next piece of machinery, knowing that the data is saved in a queue and will be automatically submitted to the control room as soon as network connection is regained.

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The Impact

After launching Switchgear Assistant and Checklist Companion, Saras experienced an increase in worker productivity due to reduced working hours on manual tasks and improved worker safety standards. Saras has immediately started the process to roll out the Switchgear Assistant and Checklist Companion applications to their entire plant network.

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