Taking A Structured Approach To Smart Operations In Energy And Chemicals

Forbes

08-07-2025

Competitive pressures to be a low-cost provider can cause many energy and chemicals companies to invest in smart operations capabilities enabled by machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). While this trend isn't new, uncertainty around global energy demand, coupled with the rapid development of Generative AI, is encouraging energy and chemicals companies to pick up the pace on AI adoption.
Smart operations use cases, such as equipment failure prediction, advanced robotics inspections and surveillance, condition-based maintenance programs, and self-diagnostic equipment optimization, are quickly gaining traction as a way for energy and chemicals companies to do more with less. It is not uncommon for business units to get ahead of the curve by piloting or initiating proof of concepts on their own to keep up with AI advancements. But, when it comes to technology and transformation, rash, siloed decision making rarely produces the intended business outcomes and is often counterproductive. Various business units may end up competing with similar use cases already being trialed or fail to consider the requirements needed to scale the solution across the asset or the enterprise.
Connecting the dots: One upgrade, many implications
In smart operations, everything is interconnected. While many business functions are siloed, digital technologies don't have to be. An investment in a single digital upgrade can impact workers, business processes, and other technologies within a facility—and often across the enterprise. For example, a seemingly straightforward investment in drone surveillance to inspect equipment, as opposed to using on-site, manned crews, can have many implications. Consider the following:
Whether the business objective is broad or targeted, achieving it will likely require a coordinated approach—one that takes into account process modifications and workforce considerations. Also, smart operational technology (OT) works hand-in-hand with IT which can require a robust foundation of computing, connectivity, data management, and cybersecurity. The investments needed to build that IT foundation, and ultimately to scale the OT and analytics that sit on top of it, will likely transcend business units and functional silos—and because of that, companies could need a structured way to think about them.
Assessing five core dimensions: Facilities of the future framework
Deloitte Global considered what smart operations may look like in a facility of the future, five core dimensions came into focus, which should be integrated in order to enable performance:
Each of these dimensions, along with their inter-relationships, are detailed in the Deloitte Global Facility of the Future (FoF) Framework, a standardized tool for assessing current-state technologies, workflows, and organizational maturity levels. The framework also exposes current limitations and presents options for helping to address them. This helps enable business leaders to understand trade-offs and key considerations when determining how, when, and where to invest in IT and OT. Moreover, the structured approach afforded by the framework enables the exercise to be repeated across the portfolio of diverse assets (e.g., upstream, midstream, and downstream), allowing for robust investment strategies to emerge across the enterprise.
Whether through the Deloitte Global FoF framework or others, leaders can benefit from taking a structured approach to investing in smart operations and to accelerating the convergence of IT and OT. The integration of these traditionally separate domains is important for energy and chemicals companies because it can lead to enhanced operational efficiency, improved decision-making, and increased competitiveness. Bringing IT and OT together enables real-time data sharing and analytics, which can help optimize processes, reduce downtime, and improve safety and compliance.
Moving the needle: Don't forget the humans
As much as smart operations, IT and OT convergence is about technology, it is much more; it also can require transformation across aspects of the technology delivery value chain ranging from vision and strategy to deployment, security, operations, and support and maintenance after it goes live. Successfully upgrading technology can also require winning the hearts and minds of internal stakeholders—it's just as important to invest in change management, upskilling and reskilling, and bringing people along the journey.
In the end, a structured approach is needed to help address both the technological and human elements. It's about moving away from random acts of digital and toward an organized program of technology adoption and competency development so investments in smart operations can be scaled efficiently to create value and growth for organizations.
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