Energy Efficiency's Secret Weapon (Blog 2)

Every manufacturing company has a significant expenditure on energy, without it there would be business. With the skyrocketing prices of oil and gas these days it's getting worse. According to industry professionals the laws of supply and demand are beginning to work, even still energy is not cheap. If only there was a way for the energy industry to make its self cheaper without losing efficiency. Well now there is. Industry leaders have focused much of their time and money into information technology to make their businesses more efficient and easier to communicate with. The article states that "67% of U.S. oil and gas companies plan to spend from $1 million to over $20 million on manufacturing operations software." (Blanchard, P. 33) Which would increase efficiencies for not only the energy industry but for all manufacturing companies in the U.S. because they wouldn't have to spend as much on energy for production. 

An energy company, Energen, has incurred outside sources (SAP) to increase automation in the transaction process and at the same time eliminate any inefficiencies in that process. Energen is now able to leverage its buying power, track customer costs and understand the productivity costs of maintenance; at a lower price and more efficiently than ever before. The software allows for intracompany communication to find out what particular sector would be more efficient to increase or decrease. However, not all companies are using the same strategies. The IT software and how its used various from organization to organization. ConocoPhillips uses an estimating system that generates information from different types of software and estimates productivity and costs. It's mainly relies on the feedback from similar strategies and its outputs. While some oil companies are using Wiki tools to retain and encapsulate the knowledge from experienced workers and pass it on to those who are less experienced. It's done through interaction between experienced workers over the internet, the company then saves the information and passes it on to its less experienced employees to benefit from. 

There is expected to be even more types of IT strategies to increase efficiency and reduce costs. It will not, however, but one specific type of hardware or software. It seems the trend is moving more in the direction of multiple imputes from may different types of technology and the amount of data that can be handled is getting greater and greater. The use of IT in the energy industry is already helping many different types of companies become more profitable, when they really harness the use of these specific IT strategies and uses, it will allow our economy as a whole to boost enormously. Simply because energy will not be as expensive and firms can use that extra capital to improve other areas of business.

"Energy Efficiency's Secret Weapon: Software"

 By: David Blanchard