Seeking to get better control over available equipment, Equinor said Dec. 16 it has teamed up with Royal Dutch Shell to use advanced analytics on historical data to optimize operational spare part inventory levels.

Development of the next generation of Shell Inventory Optimiser builds on the companies’ alliance with Microsoft, which will co-develop the tool that will run on Microsoft Azure.

Dan Jeavons, general manager of data science at Shell, said the collaboration “speaks to the digital cultural and technical strengths we share, and our history of successful collaborations in the supply chain domain and the value we can achieve working in partnership.”

Run through a joint engineering team with specialists from all three companies, the tool with integrate Microsoft Azure machine learning, Azure Databricks and Azure Datalake, Equinor said in a news release. Its new features aim to “further optimize the algorithm, driving the recommendations and an improved user experience.”

Equinor said it could save millions by reducing inventory inflow as much as 13%.

The initiative is the first of several planned across the energy value chain.

“The next step in the co-development will focus on reducing carbon footprint in our supply chain,” said Oddvar Vermedal, vice president of emerging digital technology for Equinor’s Digital Centre of Excellence. “Therefore, this collaboration is an important step in our digital transformation journey.”