Aker BP, one of Norway’s privately owned oil, gas, and energy companies, operates six major fields on the Norwegian continental shelf. The company produces around 440,000 barrels of oil equivalent daily, making it one of Europe’s largest independent listed oil producers.
Its equipment and personnel operate in some of the harshest environments on Earth. Every piece of equipment is vital for safe, efficient operations; even minor failures can cause significant downtime, production losses, or safety risks.
Maintenance costs for oil, gas, and energy companies are substantial, involving helicopters, specialized technicians, and strict safety protocols. A single maintenance trip can cost hundreds of thousands of euros, while unplanned downtime can result in millions in losses.
Recognizing these challenges, Aker BP decided to embrace digitalization to improve efficiency and safety. Its goal was to build an infrastructure where equipment could communicate its needs proactively, alerting operators well before problems occur.
To realize this vision, Aker BP implemented SAP Asset Performance Management as a hub for condition-based maintenance (CBM). In partnership with Lighthouse, the company leveraged SAP S/4HANA and SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate maintenance and enable predictive, data-driven decision-making.
Vision behind Aker BP’s digital ambitions
Within the company, the key challenge was not just collecting data but making it actionable. Knowing the importance of digitalization, Aker BP decided to deepen the understanding of available data and use it effectively for informed decision-making while ensuring thorough documentation of these decisions.
“In Aker BP, we have a strong ambition to modernize and digitalize the way we work,” shared Torben Kristensen, Advanced Reliability engineer at Aker BP. “It is not just an ambition, it is a necessity.”
Operating Normally Unmanned Installations (NUIs), Aker BP required robust monitoring solutions to gain clear insights into system health and to anticipate maintenance tasks ahead of time. This proactive approach was crucial given the remote and automated nature of the company’s facilities.
Aker BP knows that automation is integral to achieving these objectives. The company decided to automate the processing and management of the decisions made in the previous steps to enhance efficiency and accuracy.
Putting plan into action
The foundation of the project was the use of SAP Asset Performance Management to create a robust CBM hub. To meet Aker BP’s unique needs, the team leveraged standard building blocks from SAP BTP to extend SAP Asset Performance Management with the asset data onboarding application to manage data ingestion and integrate third-party alerts.
The challenges were efficiently collecting and processing time-series data and real-time alerts. With the assistance of Lighthouse, the team developed a custom onboarding application to streamline the data ingestion process for smooth integration and accurate real-time monitoring.
“Our goal is to establish a comprehensive maintenance strategy that eliminates unknown breakdowns on critical equipment,” explained Kim Alexander Jørgensen, operations manager for Reliability and CBM at Aker BP. “By leveraging real-time data and condition-based maintenance, we aim for zero unknown failures, ensuring optimized reliability across our operations.”
Using the data from SAP S/4HANA allows engineers to fine-tune how thresholds for various assets are set; alerts are only triggered when necessary, avoiding interruptions. This integration meant that the system was always working with accurate, up-to-date information, which is critical for timely and effective decision-making.
Recognizing the value of third-party specialist systems that had years of accumulated knowledge about specific equipment, Aker BP focused on integrating alerts and events from these systems into the SAP Asset Performance Management hub. This integration allowed Aker BP to benefit from external expert data without duplicating efforts, with maintenance responses based on real-time information.
The condition monitoring was handled in silos by different specialist systems, leading to inefficiencies and manual processes. The team created a unified overview page on SAP BTP that consolidates data ingestion, alert management, and monitoring in one place, allowing engineers to manage alerts more efficiently and ensure that responses are timely and well coordinated.
Seamless user experience meets workflow efficiency
With the CBM hub, engineers now have a comprehensive view of system activities at their fingertips. The heartbeat overview continuously monitors both core and third-party systems, making sure they are operational and providing confidence in the reliability of the data. This also allows engineers to quickly detect any issues that may arise during the data ingestion process.
Alerts from multiple sources offer details on system health, maintenance needs, or potential failures. Presented hierarchically, these alerts help users prioritize and easily access the most relevant, actionable information.
The 2020 migration to SAP S/4HANA was a key milestone, enabling integration of various SAP applications with SAP Asset Performance Management. This links alerts from asset performance management to business processes like work orders and notifications. For example, an SAP Asset Performance Management alert triggers an SAP Fiori notification with context-specific data, allowing immediate action without switching systems.
Integration with third-party systems adds further context, including links to original alerts in source systems for deeper analysis. By centralizing maintenance data, Aker BP has integrated multiple SAP applications into SAP Asset Performance Management, facilitating seamless workflows and supporting the growing scale and complexity of operations.
Fine-tuning was essential after implementation, as alerts were initially too frequent. The team introduced a “mass close” feature to categorize multiple alerts as false positives or data anomalies, maintaining transparency by recording closure reasons and enhancing future learning. Additionally, engineers can now add comments to alerts, documenting and sharing findings directly within the system.
Business benefits and what lies ahead for Aker BP
SAP Asset Performance Management has provided significant business value to Aker BP, including increased operational efficiency through automated monitoring and maintenance, which allows engineers to focus on critical tasks. Cost savings have been achieved through reduced emergency repairs and lower operational expenses, and real-time monitoring improves safety by identifying potential issues before they escalate, particularly in high-risk environments.
The company implemented proactive maintenance, driven by AI and machine learning, and now can estimate potential failures, which has helped the company to minimize downtime and extended the asset lifespan. The system’s centralized data — integrated with SAP S/4HANA — enhances data accessibility and interpretation, while its scalability means it can handle Aker BP’s growing operations.
“For our new project, ‘Yggdrasil,’ starting up in 2027, this solution is a prerequisite,” said Terje Lindrupsen, senior maintenance engineer at Aker BP.
The company plans to expand this solution to all of its brownfield and greenfield installations, and also plans to transition to the latest Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities in SAP Asset Performance Management, embedded IoT, in 2025, enabling even more advanced real-time monitoring capabilities.
