Keeping track of assets and pieces of assets to coordinate location and management is getting easier.

It's a familiar life cycle dilemma in the oil industry: finding drilling rig assets' whereabouts at any given time. Since rig parts and equipment are manufactured then assigned to drilling operations in quantities determined by rig activity, locating most assets is easier said than done. When activity slows, assets accumulate in equipment yards and related supply storage areas. From time to time, when a company needs a pump, for example, it procures and installs it - but generally with no paper trail about where it came from or its general maintenance history.
Conversely, when rig activity picks up again, and it's difficult to build rigs quickly enough, companies do not know where assets are to readily utilize them. Yet these assets are still on a company's books and required to be accurately reported under Sarbanes-Oxley.
Any company's main drilling equipment issue, however, remains repair and maintenance since these expenses may account for 30% of gross revenue. For a multibillion-dollar company, that is an extraordinary amount by most standards, and for small to mid-size companies the proportionate financial bite can be even more difficult to absorb. Clearly, a technological solution is long overdue.
Tagging in the supply chain
The solution is automation, through a combination of RFID, bar codes and a service provider's central database. Previously, even though companies attempted to utilize information technology (IT) systems for this purpose, the entire exercise was awkward at best. Often as not, up to four or five disparate systems had to be integrated to provide relevant information immediately without users having to laboriously search even further. As a result, that created quite a few information gaps, which have now been closed through a single system handling all a company's asset tracking.
While RFID tags are not new to the oil industry, they do present other unique challenges different from tagging in a retail environment. Besides often hot and muggy drilling areas, wear and tear is a problem, too. Recently, to alleviate these environmental problems with tags, several manufacturers which had produced RFID tags for NASA space shuttles developed Class 1 Div 2 RFID tags specifically for exploration and production companies, to function at -50°F to 250°F (-45.5°C to 121°C).
Important to successfully tracking assets throughout their entire life cycle is getting tags affixed to drilling equipment as high up in the supply chain as possible, preferably at the point of manufacture. At the outset, tags are inserted into a casing allowing them to function under highly adverse conditions. In addition, a bar code tag is affixed to the RFID tag so that if the radio frequency cannot be read, the tag can be scanned using a regular bar code scanner.
All this scanned information is fed directly into a service provider's central database by using a software application called RigMS (Rig Management System), which considerably simplifies tracking. Users log onto the system and conduct a search by simply entering an asset number. Instantaneously, results show exactly where that specific equipment is currently located and whether it has moved, e.g. from Bakersfield, Calif., to Shreveport, La., and/or any other moves (along with repair/maintenance history) within its life cycle.
Knowing asset location(s) is only the starting point in solving other parts of the puzzle, including repair and maintenance. For instance, when a mud pump needs to be repaired, a handheld-equipped user goes to the out-of-service pump and scans it. From the scanning comes an information display on the pump's specifications and repair history. Next, either the pump is repaired on site or the user creates a new work order, either specifying vendor repair service or the manufacturer if the information indicates the pump has a manufacturer's problem. He or she enters that information into the system and the work order is sent automatically to the appropriate manufacturing source for repair.
Completing the loop
Using this automated system, the provider can complete the tracking loop by tracking even oil samples. Before the advent of RFID and bar codes (and still today for most companies) information was handwritten on a sample's label and not always easily readable at the labs. Now, the sample contains pre-printed labels, bar-coded and associated with a work order. As soon as a sample is shipped out, it can be tracked from departure place and time to whom it was shipped at its destination. Through this electronic-based approach, a sample's status is continually known similar to global courier's labeling/tracking.
The lab also scans the tag, runs its tests and feeds results into the same central database as all the other RFID/bar code information for a company.
Therefore, all oil results for every engine's lifetime are in the system and readily accessible, which is extremely helpful in preventive maintenance where too much oil is routinely added to drilling equipment. Similarly, by having on file electronically the correct amount of oil that should be added to each piece of equipment, any equipment running out of sync in a system is immediately flagged electronically. So, by closing the loop on points in the life cycle - in-service through repair and maintenance - companies have a more efficient operation.
Overall, the central database system is used both for tracking and maintenance, as indicated previously, by generating problems and automatic requests for repair. As soon as problems are fixed, that information is saved and automatically sent back to the server. An example of a provider's charge for this comprehensive service is US $5 per asset at a base level. When assets in the system expand to tens of thousands, the cost drops to approximately one dollar per asset for the entire system. The system includes every RFID scanner, RFID tags, bar coding, software, back-end, hosting and all other related system capabilities.
With assets on a drilling rig having as many as a hundred or more sub-assets, tracking their life cycle for availability, repair and maintenance and accurate reporting can be very challenging. For this reason, electronic asset tracking is quickly becoming a trend that will logically evolve into an accepted industry practice. From both an asset management perspective and one that potentially generates substantial cost savings, automated asset tracking is systematically changing the drilling equipment landscape.

Comments