Chevron plans facilities of the future with Azure IoT Operations

With its Facilities and Operations of the Future initiative, Chevron is reimagining the monitoring of its physical operations to support remote and autonomous operations through enhanced capabilities and real-time access to data.

Chevron adopted Microsoft Azure IoT Operations, enabled by Azure Arc, to manage and analyze data locally at remote facilities at the edge, while still maintaining a centralized, cloud-based management plane.

Real-time insights enhance worker safety while lowering operational costs, empowering staff to focus on complex, higher-value tasks rather than routine inspections.

“By collaborating with Microsoft, we can use cloud technologies at the edge to effectively manage our assets—and that ultimately helps us fulfill Chevron’s purpose to deliver the affordable, reliable, ever-cleaner energy that the world needs.”

Raymond Smelley, GM of IT Foundation Platform, Chevron

To deliver the lower carbon energy the growing world demands, Chevron is continually seeking to optimize the efficiency, reliability, and safety of its operations. This includes ongoing efforts to use technology to unlock access to connected data across a vast network of IoT devices—ultimately for greater speed to decisions. Monitoring Chevron’s global sites is complicated by remote locations with limited connectivity and infrastructure.

Through its Facilities and Operations of the Future initiative, Chevron is reimagining the monitoring of its physical assets to support remote and autonomous operations through enhanced capabilities and real-time access to data.

Collaborating for the future: advancing edge-to-cloud technologies with Microsoft

Chevron has been working with Microsoft and already had a strong foundation in Azure. Raymond Smelley, General Manager of IT Foundation Platform at Chevron, explains, “With Azure, we have an AI-ready platform on which we could build a cloud-to-edge solution. We found that the adaptive cloud approach from Microsoft was the right choice for Chevron to secure and manage our IT resources because Microsoft has the scale and global presence.”

Chevron worked closely with Microsoft to deploy Azure IoT Operations, enabled by Azure Arc. This edge-to-cloud data plane facilitates data capture from various devices like Wi-Fi cameras, thermal cameras, sensors, robots, and drones at the edge before sending it to the cloud.

“With Azure IoT Operations, we can dynamically monitor operations and make adjustments automatically to increase efficiency. More sophisticated operational oversight also enhances worker safety and productivity.”

Raymond Smelley, GM of IT Foundation Platform, Chevron

Ed Moore, Operations Technology Strategist and Distinguished Engineer at Chevron, points to the management control plane of Azure Arc as a key advantage. “Azure Arc is really about the single management plane. With a single pane of glass, we can manage our environments and ensure they are running properly,” explains Moore.

Chevron chose Azure for its flexible infrastructure to control data and scale globally, unifying sites and systems into one AI-assisted control pane. Using AI at the edge, where sensors are located at the equipment, helps optimize equipment and bandwidth costs and accelerates speed to insights. Cari Armpriester, Facilities and Operations of the Future Program Manager at Chevron, notes, “We can use the data captured with devices at the edge in new ways with more analytics and AI to better predict anomalies, minimizing downtime and optimizing business outcomes.”

Enhancing workplace safety

“With Azure IoT Operations, we can dynamically monitor operations and make adjustments automatically to increase efficiency,” Smelley says. “More sophisticated operational oversight also enhances worker safety and productivity.”

“Azure IoT Operations can enable us to better detect or predict operational needs from thousands of miles away without needing to send our personnel to remote locations,” Armpriester explains. “With remote monitoring, our team can focus on solving more complex issues.”

Smelley concludes, “By collaborating with Microsoft, we can use cloud technologies at the edge to effectively manage our assets—and that ultimately helps us fulfill Chevron’s purpose to deliver the affordable, reliable, ever-cleaner energy that the world needs.”

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