HMEL selects IBM as strategic business and technology partner for Guru Gobind Singh Refinery

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has announced that HPCL-Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL), a joint
venture between Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited, an Indian
government-owned enterprise, and Mittal Energy Investments,
Singapore, a Lakshmi N Mittal Group Company, has selected IBM as its
strategic partner in the design and implementation of a
state-of-the-art Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for their zero
residue refinery.

lang="en-IN">
HMEL
is
investing more than US $4 billion to build the green refinery,
which will be able to process 1,80,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Located in Bathinda, in the state of Punjab, the energy-efficient,
environment-friendly, high distillate yielding complex refinery on
commissioning shall produce clean fuels and polypropylene by
processing all types of crudes. Being
a green-field venture, HMEL needed business processes and
applications to commission and operate the grass-roots refinery and
allied facilities. HMEL's endeavor is to have processes built
around leading practices and implemented on best-in-class
applications. HMEL selected IBM as its strategic MES partner to
design the processes for manufacturing, select the applications and
manage the implementation of the packages and build a common
integration and reporting framework for HMEL.

Through
the
1.5 year, multi-million dollar agreement, IBM will integrate all
of HMEL's operations, ranging from manufacturing to marketing and
distribution. Having a single, unified view of business operations
and access to real-time information across all systems will help HMEL
to operate the new refinery with maximum efficiency and return on
investments. It will also improve decision making in the areas ofs
energy and quality management, planning and scheduling, trade and
risk management, and physical security. ”It is
critical for HMEL to establish processes that help the
company get a single, comprehensive view of its operations and also
bring in greater efficiency into the system," said Richard
Dirckx, VP-Operations, HMEL. "IBM understood our needs and has
the global expertise, knowledge repositories of leading practices,
processes and key performance indicators to support our goal of
becoming one of the smartest refineries in the world. In fact, HMEL
will be among only a handful of refineries to start operations with
the full suite of MES applications," he added.

lang="en-IN">The best-in-class
applications supporting the new refinery will be integrated using the
IBM Chemical and Petroleum Integrated Information Framework, a
technology platform based on open industry standards that will bring
together advanced information management, analytics and process
integration software from IBM and other suppliers. HMEL will use
business intelligence and performance management software, including
performance dashboards, to monitor performance, set targets, and
optimize resources. “ size="3">It
is an exciting opportunity for IBM to work with HMEL and help them in
this key project,” said Vanitha Narayanan, Managing Partner-Global
Business Services, IBM India/South Asia. “We strongly believe that
with our domain experts and global experience, we will help HMEL to
transform the way information is gathered, combined and analyzed. The
best-of-breed solutions approach will help them discover new ways
to improve production efficiencies and be among the best refineries
globally creating a true smarter refinery," said Vanitha. The
refinery is expected to be commissioned by early 2011.

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