What does it actually take to bridge operational technology and IT inside a running refinery - where the machines that keep crude flowing cannot be touched by a network intrusion? Kushagra Verma, who leads corporate AI transformation at HMEL and has spent 16 years at the company moving from coder to finance to the digital team, brings a practitioner's answer. HMEL runs a 9 MMTPA refinery in Bhatinda, has been on SAP since day one of operations, won the SAP ACE Award for its paperless plant logistics system, and recently launched what the transcript describes as an AI-enabled energy station. This episode covers how the company enforces one-way OT-to-IT data flow, why a network-layer diode technology is being evaluated to air-gap the OT layer entirely, and what it means to build a next-generation refinery command center while SAP remains the single source of truth.
Kushagra walks through HMEL's fully automated truck-loading and product evacuation system, where a vehicle enters, is weighed, loads, triggers a real-time SAP sales invoice, receives statutory transport documents, and exits without a single human touch — and explains why the airplane turnaround analogy fits. He addresses the Clean Core challenge honestly: roughly 10,000 custom objects accumulated over 15 years make a full migration very difficult, so the team is starting with housekeeping, inventorying unused objects, and applying Clean Core only to new standalone implementations. His advice for any mid-sized refiner starting this journey: build a culture that lets people fail fast, expose teams to what peer companies are doing, choose a long-term technology partner whose vision aligns with yours, and treat AI on the IT side as non-negotiable right now.
Episode Chapters 00:00 — Introduction: SAP Autonomous Enterprise Podcast 00:30 — Guest introduction: Kushagra Verma, 16 years at HMEL 01:56 — OT-IT integration: one-way data flow and the diode technology under evaluation 05:14 — Who are the primary internal customers of HMEL's digital transformation 07:53 — AI for sulfur threshold management and HMEL's patent filing 08:23 — Fully automated plant logistics: how the truck-loading system works 10:34 — Partnership architecture: SAP as hub, Amazon and Aveva for specialist functions 11:08 — Jewel AI launch: 30 use cases live in less than 30 days 14:29 — Clean Core: the honest reality of 10,000 custom objects 17:02 — Advice for a mid-sized refiner starting the autonomous enterprise journey 21:54 — One thing a leader must get right: people with the right vision and autonomy to execute 23:13 — Outro
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