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so hello everyone my name is lee nichols and i'm the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of hydrocarbon processing and gas processing and lng publications and i'd like to welcome all of you to another installment of hydrocarbon processing podcast series the main column today we have a very special guest joining us today it's ron beck who is the marketing strategy director for aspen technology today we're going to be discussing the hpi's digital transformation the self-optimizing plan and where the industry is heading down in this digital journey now before we do get started i do want to let you know that you can subscribe to the main column podcast by clicking on the subscribe button or by using your smartphone by saying hey google alexa or siri subscribe me to the main column podcast so with that i would like to welcome in ron beck ron how are you doing today i'm doing great thanks for having me on the podcast lee oh absolutely excellent so first of course we really appreciate your time today and for providing some insights on the industry's digital journeys so let's go ahead and jump right in okay so the challenges for refining and petrochemicals of course continues especially with the fallout from the cova 19 pandemic and then of course all of the oil demand shifts so i'm kind of curious what do you see as the best ways technology can help in this front sure so that's a good opening question lee um definitely as everybody knows the industry's been going through a lot the last five months and it's in a bunch of different directions but i think mainly what it's done is it's accelerated companies and executives thinking about what's happening in the industry uh it's made everybody think now instead of a few years from now about you know what's going to happen with the energy transition what's going to happen as older expert employees retire um and also with the uncertainty and supply and demand and the global supply chains it's really a matter of economic survival for a lot of companies in the industry so technology is what a lot of executives are turning to as a solution and really with what the last downturn i think companies trimmed costs in all the conventional ways and now they're seeing this time around really it's a matter of technology really offers the only real way to change change the business to make it more agile and also cut costs and of course that's a great segue into my next question which of course aspen tag just unveiled its vision and strategy for the self-optimizing plants so in just a few words can you kind of explain to the audience what that is and then of course why is it important yeah so i think aspen tech about a year ago maybe a little longer we looked at two or three key things happening in the industry the first is some information uh presented by several of the uh major global strategy groups you know really ranking the process industries in general and energy in particular as quite far behind the curve compared to other industries in adoption of digitalization ai and related technologies and the other thing is that that you know there was a lot of uh opportunity there very fast technology development so we we realized we needed to develop a vision because everybody wanted to change but nobody really had a vision um and so there's two ways you can go when you when you innovate technology in in an established company like aspen tech who's really an industry leader across the board in all our solution areas one is sort of incremental development where you develop come up with new ideas every six months or a year but the other is to set a future target so we realized it was really time to set a future target because like i said customers want to go somewhere but they in terms of uh more automation more adoption of ai but there really wasn't a vision so we took together a small group of people in the company led by our ceo and talked to a lot of customers and created a future vision and then tested it and now we've announced it a few weeks ago to the public and gotten a really great response so far but we've really mobilized our whole company it's a way to energize our entire company around future innovation towards a goal that will change the industry and so yeah i'm glad you mentioned mentioned ai because i've heard industrial a in general ai so i'm kind of curious what does industrial ai mean and then how is that different than just say general artificial intelligence yeah so um yeah that's a good good leading question lee um because um you know coming off of what i just mentioned about the self-optimizing plant i didn't really define what it is but fundamentally you know companies realize that with advanced technologies ai and things you can start taking people out of dangerous places and out of the plant and certainly in commercial settings and insurance banking commerce ai has been big but in industry people have been very hesitant about ai because of the risk of explosions accidents incidents in the plant really everything about asset safety and integrity so what a industrial ai does is it takes the knowledge of the industry the industrial part the domain expertise and then it takes the ai part and puts them together in a way that will make make the uh technology very easily adoptable by an industry like the process industry so industrial ai is the merger of domain expertise and advanced analytics and ai and the embedding of that ai within uh industry specific solutions so that normal workers in that industry can adopt them without having to be uh you know fancy data scientists so yeah i want to go back to something you said at the very beginning of our of our discussion and that was on how technology is helping during this time of uncertainty so i want to talk more in depth about planning so why is planning so important uh when it comes to times like these especially within our industry yeah so planning is really important um because it's what happens in a refinery or petrochemical plant on a a monthly and quarterly basis to really set the economic goals for the plant and so the planners rightly so view themselves as crucial in the profitability of an enterprise and oftentimes are accountable pretty closely to the to the overall plan manager and even the ceo but traditionally there's been an on uh you know problem for years it's sort of known as the difference between the plan and the actual and so you set a plan and then you never achieve it and if you miss by a lot it's the difference between making money that month or losing money that month and now you add on to that huge uncertainties and shifts in demand and supply and prices and costs and different things you want to do in your plant and the traders are saying we have an opportunity to buy a really cheap shipment of crude should i buy it today um and the planners have to make very fast decisions so this is a right at the crux of uh you know the area where technology needs to be introduced the fastest uh in order to to really um maximize the economics in this changeable time to increase agility and resilience of a plant um so this was this has been the first area and we actually just introduced the about a week ago um something we called aspen unified which ties together the planning with the other operations functions in the plant the scheduling and the actual optimization and control so to start bringing that plan very close to the reality and to allow the plan to react very quickly to changing both the changing conditions in the plan and the external conditions but it's absolutely crucial if planning is flexible then the enterprise is flexible and technology is is really critical there absolutely okay so i want to switch a little bit uh i want to switch focus now um to to of course a topic that's been pretty crucial industry over the last few years and of course that's talent changes in the energy field especially in this area of say knowledge transfer so i'm kind of curious are you seeing that in the discussions you're having with your customers um and if so what are some of the potential solutions and i would imagine of course that technology could be a game changer is that correct yeah so yes so the talent the challenge is huge uh maybe some of the readers saw just a few weeks ago a really interesting article in the wall street journal that looked into that um and the per the really the upshot of that article was um the author was was arguing that um recent graduates weren't being attracted to join the energy field just at a time when people were needed because of you know experienced people retiring so how do you change that um so i mean i think uh back going back a few years the energy industry was actually viewed as a pretty exciting field to go into you know the jobs paid well but more than that it was sort of a viewed as exciting technology you get into you know whether it's upstream or downstream or chemicals you're dealing with complex technology you're solving exciting problems and i think today partly because of what i mentioned at the beginning the industry is seen as a laggard in terms of adoption of technology so if you're a smart young you know knowledge worker you don't necessarily pick energy as your first choice um so and then the other part is everybody coming into the workforce now is a digital native so the traditional software solutions and that are used every day and you can't separate software technology from any job today it's part of every job so if those technologies look old or they're hard to use it it sort of leaves uh you know a potential new employee a little bit cold so first of all so the intuitive nature the advanced nature the introduction of things like artificial intelligence concepts like being able to run parts of a of a plant autonomously or you know having what we call the self-optimizing plant um becomes a really key factor in terms of attracting these new people but also it's about cutting down the training time so you know lots of studies say take six or seven years for a new worker and the energy field to really become highly productive um because of the specialized nature of the jobs and the equipment and the processes so you know definitely ai we're seeing lots of ways where we can use that um to cut down the time required to really understand the tools people are using so the workers understand the tools and are presented with the information to make more intelligent strategic decisions you know way before they've had five or ten years of experience through these sort of so-called technology assists but there's more to it than that you know there's fundamental changes in the way people learn like you said knowledge transfer you know if you get a new something in the store a tool or a let's say you buy a chainsaw you know or or a new car or whatever it is you know if you're if you're a digital native person you're much more likely to just go online and look at a youtube video than read a manual or take a course right so um there's a whole new way of gaining knowledge and and fields you know industries like the energy industry need to to adopt that and to you know so one of the things for example in the pandemic we we had just started a new brand new program with electronic certification you know of of our software products for people to be able to become certified at different levels of proficiency in these uh sophisticated tools using you know online learning we decided right away when the pandemic started our ceo decided we would give away instead of charging for the certification we would give it away for an extended period of time and we had several thousand people you know step up and certify themselves as planners we were talking about schedulers apc engineers uh proficiency with our engineering modeling tools and so forth so i think it's it's a game changer technology is totally crucial here i mean all you have to do is look at um what's been happening with distance learning in schools right anybody who has kids you know some teachers have figured out how do we use technology to engage the kids when they're from home and others haven't and some school systems have in some school systems haven't and that's the difference between places where the parents are all frustrated with where they're happier um with this new environment and it's the same thing with companies you know if a company gets behind this and uh figures out how to make this work for their employees and get them engaged and excited they're the companies are going to thrive in this environment they're going to get the new employees the employees are going to be motivated and more proficient and we as a supplier have a huge part in that to provide the advanced ways of learning and we have put in place groups of people you know introducing stuff doing research on it how do we better help with knowledge transfer well that's absolutely true especially when you see how early uh kids get a hold of technology in their hands i mean it's you see you know two-year-olds are playing with an iphone you know they know how to operate it so yeah absolutely yeah well i do want to go to another challenge too and of course that's on sustainability uh more specifically on decarbonization so of course this has been a major driver for corporate change in places like europe i know we've heard of companies like total and bp and shell they're planning to move their companies towards carbon neutrality so here in the u.s of course the optics are a little bit different so i'm kind of i kind of want to get your opinion on what are you seeing both in the u.s and globally uh on this topic and of course i'm guessing technology can probably play a huge role here i'm guessing right yeah i mean uh it's a very complicated problem for a company um and yes you know in europe and asia too you know in asia interesting is extremely aggressive on this because you know they're highly dependent on tourism and so the idea of the circular economy and getting rid of plastic waste is huge in in asia and affects the chemical industry um but yes so yeah the strategies have been different in the us and in europe and asia so in europe and asia we've been working with companies to put in place sophisticated digital twin dashboards that let them track carbon you know carbon uh emissions and things like that but fundamentally in europe um like you said the companies have pledged to move quickly and this has really been you know their strategies have in large part really been about changing their businesses so changing where they're investing their large amounts of capital to let's say buy into you know renewable energy or other sectors that give them a broader energy portfolio beyond just oil and gas whereas i think in the u.s you know texas uh and uh colorado and so forth uh people are more um doubling down on how do we how you know how do we maximize our economics from oil and gas because that's more you know the the style in the u.s right now but i think here um it's a more challenging problem actually because if you're just gonna change your carbon footprint by buying new businesses that's in a way easier but if you're going to do it by figuring out how do we improve our company so just take one simple example and let's say just stick with texas so okay you know yes texas is a you know highly pro-energy part of the world and in fact you know the economy is highly dependent on it the permian and other places are great resources to develop but um you know but all at the same time texas is a huge outdoor place you know people love hunting and fishing they're huge ranches uh so water becomes is an interesting issue in texas because water is crucial for things like fracking or an enhanced recovery and and all oil and gas production but at the same time you know the same people who are making the energy industry go want clean water resources for for the health of texas right so so i think things like water flaring and things like that become a nexus in the united states and technology can be huge here and this is where you can use technology you know a lot of a you know because it's a complex optimization problem how do i make the most money off of my resources or out of my refinery but at t e same time um have you know very positive results in optics uh in the enviro you know for the society in terms of what i'm doing with let's say texas water or how am i reducing flaring in north dakota or other things like that so um so and here we're you know this is where things like digital twin technologies ability to show the public and to show uh investors that you're you are in fact making a lot of progress and you understand how to run things in a clean way are important excellent well i only have one more for you and of course i need you to put on uh i need to take out the crystal ball and tell so what do you see what's next on the horizon industry so what and i guess other things or what what other exciting areas is aspen tech working on on today and then of course into the future okay so lee we touched a couple of times here on ai and things like that and i'm pretty sure you you have had and will have other guests talking about ai on your your blogs in the future but um i i want to emphasize one point we don't see um this and we're heavily involved in innovating in the ai and machine learning area we don't see this meaning that people come out of the equation it's just that the nature of jobs are going to change so everybody listening to this podcast who works in the industry for example you know i think the call to action there is to think about making yourself adaptable and to re-educating yourself continuously because the nature of the jobs are going to change they're going to be more interesting but they're going to be different so instead of just being let's say an operator who sits there and operates a part a section of a refinery you're going to be more of a strategic worker looking at what the data is telling you the plant is doing to react to different situations and looking at more strategic choices that the company can and should be making within that asset or across that that's to make money you know they so that's one way things are going to change but i go back to the vision i talked about about the self-optimizing plant so for us one of the exciting things about this vision is it gives us a lot of things to do in the next few years and we believe it allows us to innovate even more fast because we know where we're going we have a vision we want to give companies the intelligent tools to run intelligent plants that get the most out of those plants in the safest way possible with the use of technology so i think there's a huge number of of exciting things that are kind of come out there and you know aspen tech has always been known as a company with discipline and execution that's why the industry trusts us and what the self-optimizing plant does is it gives us a whole innovation focus to both innovate rapidly but do it with discipline and execution so i don't see us deviating a lot from this um you know self-optimizing plant vision it's a vision for the next five to ten years for us to develop against but you'll see even within uh you know three to four weeks of this blog of this podcast coming out lee um we're going to be introducing it to the market really important exciting new technology called hybrid modeling which is going to be a huge practical set of technologies that demonstrate this industrial ai have been talking about so that's gonna i think it's gonna take the industry one to two to three years to really understand how important and exciting this is and how to really use it to make money and to innovate and to change their their plants but i think that's uh for us the exciting thing coming in the next few years excellent well yeah we definitely can't wait to hear more about that of course when y'all unveil it so definitely keep us in the loop on that one uh well that was that's pretty much the time we have today today ron again we really want to thank you for your time today especially on on giving us some of your expertise on digital technologies in the hpi and of course how aspen tag is optimized in operation so we really sincerely appreciate your time um lastly of course we really want to thank all of you for listening to another installment of hydrocarbon processing podcast the main column