French oil major Total and India’s Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have signed a partnership agreement to create a digital innovation center in India. Based in Pune in the state of Maharashtra, the center will explore disruptive technologies and solutions.

“For a large industrial group like Total, it is essential to always stay ahead of these topics,” said Marie-Noëlle Semeria, senior vice president and group chief technology officer at Total. “After having integrated digital solutions within the Group, we now want to invent those of tomorrow by combining Total’s know-how with the agility of TCS.”

The partnership will initially focus on refining. Thanks to the intensive use of digital technology, the various building blocks of refining (production units, processes, the supply chain and petroleum product markets) will be driven in a wide-ranging way to improve refinery performance. Real-time data analytics, the Internet of Things, automation, artificial intelligence and agile methodology will be used to improve industrial efficiency, energy performance and availability rates.

“With the digital innovation center, we are positioning ourselves as a pioneer working to develop a smart, connected refinery that will allow us to improve our industrial competitiveness. We want to invent the Refinery 4.0,” said Bernard Pinatel, president, Refining & Chemicals at Total.

Based on the TCS concept of “entrepreneurship-in-residence,” Total will work with TCS technology and domains experts. TCS will also bring to Total its network, its structured co-innovation approach and its unique Business 4.0 cooperation framework.

“The energy and resources sector is one of TCS’ fastest growing business units. We are delighted to sign this strategic digital innovation partnership with Total for which we will leverage our Business 4.0 framework, with a focus on agile, intelligent automation, internet of things, analytics and cloud-based solutions,” said Debashish Ghosh, president of Energy, Resources and EPC Business at TCS.

The digital innovation center in India will build on the industrial digital technology initiatives already deployed at Total’s production sites.

The aim of industrial digital technology is to make operations safer and more efficient, by making better decisions faster, simplifying operators’ day-to-day work to enhance their efficiency, and reducing costs. Industrial digital technology is a highly effective tool for improving industrial competitiveness.