Arun Goel has over 15 years of diverse experience in the power, petrochemicals, metals and mining, and oil and gas sectors as a digital leader in Industry 4.0. He is currently digital head of the Rajasthan Gas Division of Cairn Oil & Gas. For over a decade, he has been responsible for defining the digital roadmap and its execution. At Cairn Oil & Gas, his expertise lies in envisioning and implementing sustainable digital interventions to increase production, reduce costs of operation and, contribute to the company’s environment, safety and health vision. Cairn Oil & Gas, a vertical of Vedanta Limited, is the largest private oil and gas exploration and production company in India, accounting for more than a quarter of India’s domestic crude oil production.
In the past, Goel has worked with Hindustan Zinc Limited, Honeywell Technology Solutions Limited, Reliance Industries Limited and Agro Dutch Industries, handling different portfolios such as maintenance, commissioning and projects.
Goel believes that oil companies have a huge dependency on automation. Every company’s operation generates a large amount of data. The current industry challenge is not only the inaccessibility of data, but also its effective use. Cloud, software tools, workflow automation and analytics can translate huge volumes of data into meaningful, intelligent information that can be leveraged to make key data-driven business decisions.
Goel’s most memorable assignment was Project Pratham at Cairn Oil & Gas, which resulted in the democratisation of technology across the organisation. He leads the Industry 4.0 initiatives across the value chain including cloud adoption, drone/industrial IoT deployment, artificial intelligence/machine learning-based surveillance, digital twin, and model predictive control. These interventions helped in realising the company’s goal and addressing its business problems. Transparency and trust within the team are the key cornerstones of Goel’s management style, and are critical for delivering business goals. He focuses on open and clear communication, a flat hierarchy and collaboration within the team.
Goel believes that digitalisation is more than just adopting new technology; it is about changing the mindset and way of working. One of his favourite quotes is, “What remains unchanged for too long destroys itself.”
Goel is an electronics and instrumentation engineer with certifications in ISO, Safety (DuPont), Six Sigma and SAFe Scrum Master. w