Business Trends: Smart refineries—Leveraging data for operational intelligence

Murli D. Agrawal is an Advisor and Director for Downstream COE at TCS’s Oil and Gas Global Practice. He formerly served as General Manager of IT and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of downstream manufacturing for BPCL, India’s second-largest oil major. Mr. Agrawal was an architect of an integrated, real-time refinery information model for end-to-end processes that was implemented at two BPCL refineries. He is now involved in designing strategies for downstream domain excellence studies for global customers and mentoring for comprehensive solution design proposals for global refineries. Mr. Agrawal also serves as VP and President-elect of the Bombay Management Association (BMA), is a member of the Apex Professional University body of senior managers, and is a visiting faculty member at the Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management (SJMSOM), which is part of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai.

Ardish M. Morawala, associate author, is a Sales Consultant for engineering and industrial systems in the Asia-Pacific region for Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. He has 38 yr of technical experience in electronic systems engineering and the installation of motor controls, automation, DCS and embedded devices. Mr. Morawala specializes in field implementations of complex electronic and IT systems. Throughout his career, he has been actively engaged at site installations of electronic drives in large steel rolling mills and UPS systems in EDP centers. For a decade, he was responsible for the engineering of DCS systems, including RTUs and central computer systems. As part of a team, he installed DCS systems for railway traction control, ONGC offshore oil rigs, water treatment plants and power distribution utilities.