Caltex Oil Improves Engineering Processes Using Aras Innovator

Caltex Oil Tools is a leading oil and gas equipment manufacturer that has developed onshore and offshore exploration products for over 30 years. The company specializes in engineering reliable products that help global oil and gas operators navigate complex subsea challenges, maximize operational efficiency, and reduce production costs.

After the company underwent an ownership and leadership change, the business experienced a strategic shift to focus on highly specialized engineering capabilities and solutions — specifically on equipment used between the water line and mud line in the deep-water space. A typical engagement might involve oil well ‘production enhancement,’ where specialized equipment is used to make a well more productive. This involves developing machinery that gives the field team access to the well bore to deliver chemical packages that increase oil production.

Pain Points

A key industry differentiator for Caltex is its ability to respond quickly to each customer’s unique complexities, needs, and timelines. Effective data management provides valuable information to generate solutions faster and more efficiently and achieve better results.

For instance, when they were tasked with “killing” an oil well in an operationally remote part of the Gulf of Mexico, Caltex’s team knew how to complete the task effectively. They needed to fabricate and deploy equipment to pump in fluids with a very high specific gravity of 20,000 standard cubic feet of helium to smother and kill the well in 7,200 feet of water.

However, completing this complex project required the right business processes and data management procedures to be fully established at Caltex. The company quickly realized it needed to invest in the right product lifecycle management (PLM) solution to improve its engineering processes. Previously, Caltex’s team dealt with legacy product data management (PDM) and PLM tools, which run on outdated technology, required costly upgrades, and were poorly connected to other systems.

Gaps in PDM and PLM also meant that the company couldn’t efficiently tackle its digital transformation, especially while pioneering in the oil and gas industry, where engineering innovation is a prerequisite. A suboptimal PLM would slow down engineering process improvements and make them ineffective.

As the company expanded its operations and refined its exploration technology, it needed an affordable PLM solution to unify data and sustain flexible business growth amidst inevitable industry changes.

Caltex’s PLM Requirements

During its search, Caltex was interested in a PLM solution that could:

• Unify the company’s data to promote business growth
• Support product customization and application connectivity
• Provide flexible but unique system adjustments without unnecessary upgrades
• Drive engineering process improvements across the business
• Enable adaptation to evolving, inevitable industry changes

Caltex also needed a PLM solution to improve the development of its customer-facing industrial technology or subsea exploration techniques alongside its “back office” processes, such as data management and business intelligence.

Caltex’s Successes with Aras Innovator

Caltex adopted Aras Innovator as a PLM solution because it could support their customization and application connectivity needs. Aras’ platform provided the flexibility Caltex Oil needed to optimize its open architecture without paying too much for each upgrade.

Caltex’s team focused its initial implementation on Aras’ Product Engineering application to streamline PLM and PDM across its parts, BOMs, documents, drawings, and change management. Then, the company connected Aras to its existing Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) infrastructure so that critical enterprise resource planning (ERP) data, such as customer POs, sourcing information, and manufacturing data, could inform everything from engineering to maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO).

Another critical aspect of the implementation involved adopting a connector service that could synchronize, normalize, and map data to and from Aras and other applications that Caltex could use as they grew. After researching various connector services, the Caltex team selected Nexus, a solution offered by vdR Group, an Aras Gold Partner.

Once Caltex implemented Nexus, engineering teams could interact with ERP-related data natively in Aras, streamlining operations and ensuring the company could easily incorporate future data sources. With an active integration, Caltex’s team can push parts and BOMs to D365 and create federated links to return master properties, such as inventory levels, pricing, and units of measure.

Results

Following the Aras and Nexus implementation, Caltex’s key metrics have improved. One customer enhanced their well production by 360%, a significantly higher improvement than the industry standard of 100%. Caltex also accelerated its typical time-to-delivery by 84%, reducing the project timeline from 24 to four months, with a 65% cost reduction relative to its competitors.

Now that Caltex has established its PLM and PDM, it can expand its digital thread and create and manage digital twin configurations across key functional areas like manufacturing, maintenance, repair, and overhaul. The company also plans to extend its use of Aras Innovator for MRO across the products it engineers for customers and those it builds and operates. With these capabilities, Caltex can streamline its high-spec equipment maintenance and facilitate documentation of all repairs, replacements, and inspections.

Caltex also plans to collaborate with vdR Group to develop a portal for its vendors and customers to directly access complete, up-to-date manufacturing data, operation, and maintenance manuals, and quality documentation for Caltex’s equipment. This would eliminate paper-based processes and streamline vendor deliveries of documentation, material certifications, and quality documents into a portal connected to Aras’ digital thread.

That integration would also improve the traceability of purchased items and those in development, providing customers with visibility into Caltex’s MRO system to audit and validate the condition of the well-control equipment they want to buy.

Eventually, Caltex plans to provide regulators with a portal to access information on demand. Adding value across the product chain means Caltex—in partnership with Aras and vdR Group—can expand its business effectively, offer transformative solutions to its customers, and continue to lead in the industry.

“If I tell a customer that they’ve got full access to the manufacturing data for a product that we developed for them, that’s going to blow their mind. That’s going to set us apart from our competitors, and it’s going to give us some improvement in productivity and lower
our costs and improve our quality.”

– CHRIS MANCINI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, CALTEX