Digitalization & Digital Twin Services
Turning asset data into a working digital model that operators can plan and maintain from.
Capabilities
A digital twin is a model of a physical asset that is kept true to it: built from the asset's own drawings, instrumentation and operating records, and accurate enough that a change can be tested on the model before it is made on the plant. Used well, it turns a small number of measurement points into a picture of the whole system.
Sato approaches this from the infrastructure side. We already supply, install and commission the metering and instrumentation such a model depends on, and we already hold the asset records — drawings, as-builts, inspection histories — that give it something to be built from. The modelling and simulation are delivered with our technical partners.
This page describes a capability. Sato has no completed digital twin project to cite yet, and delivered work will be described here as it is finished.
Asset data and information management
- Capture and structuring of asset records: drawings, as-builts, inspection and maintenance histories
- Information management standards and workflows, so a model can be kept current rather than rebuilt
- Digitalisation of paper maintenance, inspection and commissioning records
Instrumentation and telemetry
- Field instrumentation, metering and telemetry specified and installed to feed an asset model
- Integration with existing metering, SCADA and utility billing data
- Condition and performance dashboards for the people operating the asset
Modelling, simulation and virtual testing
- Physics-based and data-driven models of structures, plant and process systems
- Virtual testing of operating changes, uprating and modifications before they are made
- Model validation against measured behaviour, and re-validation as the asset changes
- Reservoir, well and production digital twins for oil and gas assets
Solutions
What a maintained model is actually for. Each of these is a decision an operator has to make anyway; the twin changes what it is made on.
Condition monitoring from a few sensors
A model calibrated against measurement infers what is happening across a structure or a system from the handful of points where instrumenting it is practical. That is usually the difference between monitoring an asset and instrumenting all of it.
Maintenance planned on evidence
Inspection and intervention planned against what the measurements and the model say about condition, rather than against a fixed calendar that is either too early or too late.
Testing a change before it is made
Operating changes, modifications and uprating tried on the model first, where being wrong costs nothing and where the answer arrives before the shutdown is booked.
Real-time production optimization
For oil and gas assets, the real-time optimization, AI-assisted production and reservoir work set out under Oil & Gas Services, delivered with the same partner team. The solutions stack there — surveillance, analysis, optimization, transformation — is the same one applied to a producing field.
Metering data and water accounting
Bulk and consumer metering brought together so a water undertaking can see where water and revenue are being lost. Sato has supplied and installed metering at that scale; the analysis built on top of it is what is new.
Partnerships
Sato delivers digitalization and digital twin work with its technical partners. The modelling, simulation and data science sit with them; the asset knowledge, the instrumentation and the site delivery sit with us.
It is the same technical partner team that delivers Sato's oil and gas services.
Related services
Oil & Gas Services
Consulting, engineering and digital technology for upstream oil and gas.
Backed by Sato
Whichever service delivers your project, the same plant, people and systems stand behind it.
Working on a project in infrastructure, energy or oil and gas? Talk to our team.