Refining Industry is experiencing renewed focus with global economic changes and geo-political developments. The global economic scenario in recent years has contributed to the demand supply gap in the energy industry and is expected to increase further in the coming years. Optimum utilization of existing facilities is crucial in the strategic planning and meeting the marker situations. The performance monitoring plays an important role in identifying the bottlenecks and improvement areas. Performance visualization is a key factor and a value added strategic strength in the short and long term planning and improves the operational effectiveness. Monitoring and visualization in all key relevant areas of operation are important for overall performance. The refining manufacturing has several challenges and need to have flexibility in operations to adapt to dynamic market situations while maintaining the competitive overall economic margin through maximizing the efficiency of the production facility. There exist various advanced applications for key areas of manufacturing and are aimed to play an important role in providing these objectives. However, most of them require additional development or integration with other applications and could not be utilized to the expected level. This paper describes key challenges associated with some of the important areas of refining operation and provides a conceptual structure for an integrated performance monitoring and visualization towards smart manufacturing.

Key words: Oil and Refining Industry, Real-time information, Performance Monitoring, Visualization, Applications

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