HYDROCARBON
ENGINEERING
66
value added resellers. However, established solution
providers have started to develop mainstream
solutions for this market. Industry experience and
ability to deliver solutions for a variety of product
grades will decide who leads the market over the
next 2 - 3 years.
Best practices
As rail based hydrocarbon transportation is here to
stay, some of the best practices to be pursued in this
market are:
n
Deployment of fleet management best practices
for rail management.
n
Integration of rail loading and unloading
operations at the terminal using components
such as real time location sensing (RTLS), global
positioning satellites (GPS), ocular character
recognition (OCR) and radio frequency
identification (RFID).
n
Real time data visibility and asset optimisation
to meet the growing demand.
New service requirements will be another growth
opportunity for solution providers. As the ageing
workforce continues to be an issue, end users are
looking to automate their operations end to end in
order to maintain operational excellence. A case in
point is the need for integration services to connect
multiple terminals that are currently managed by
disparate functions and systems. Another example is
the need to centralise alarm management across
terminals. These are real customer needs that Frost &
Sullivan obtained from user interactions.
Summing up, holistic offerings from solution
providers are the need for the day.
Three big predictions for
the next five years
n
Low cost feedstock derivative will impact
industrial markets will create extensive
brownfield opportunities for modernisation,
capacity expansion and retrofit addition to
existing infrastructure.
n
The software and services product segments will
witness the highest growth during the forecast
period as end users look for application specific
tools such as loading automation and order
management software to optimise
terminal operations and after sales
support to minimise downtime.
n
Infrastructure investments in
pipelines and rail networks to
transport the abundant oil and gas
produced in North America will
create new terminal automation
opportunities for solution providers,
particularly in the area of rail
management software which can
provide real time data streams on
product identification, location and
performance.
T&T
Figure 4.
Opportunities from rail infrastructure
investment.
Figure 5.
New service requirements: data
integration.
Figure 6.
Requirements of a holistic solution offering.
