The rate of digitalisation and the benefits of going through that transformation is enormous in many industries. We specifically look at Oil and Gas and I see numerous opportunities for the traditional Oil and Gas companies to take advantage of the latest revolution in technology. Specifically, the subject we want to cover is the aging population and the knowledge and power that this population has, which is immense. All those years of working in these really intriguing and key areas walked out the door with them and that’s massively dangerous.
You look at technology businesses and they look at it in quite a different way. Many years ago, they understood that knowledge and understanding of the business was very powerful. You look at leading technology companies and the last 15 years they’ve been chartering that. They haven’t had to rely on making that transformation today because it was part of the DNA from the beginning for many companies. Why is that important? As I said earlier, when people walk out of the door, that knowledge and understanding walks with them. In this industry the knowledge that walks out is incredibly important. This is not just the know-how of maintenance schedules and inspection, which are all very important topics, but also from a health and safety aspect and the security aspect. Digitalisation is important and it’s the key way to capture that knowledge and then bring it into a platform.
What Lloyd’s Register has been specifically focusing on over the last few years is the development of our digital platforms and solutions, which are asset performance management and risk solution. This helps organisations to capture that information with a very simple model builder which brings that information into a library and then makes it accessible for the organisation in any fashion. It only gets richer with time, where we bring in more knowledge and capture more information as the organisation moves forward. So, it becomes the company’s asset. What we’re trying to do is stop DNA walking out the door. We want to add that DNA into a software platform.
The platform approach which we’ve taken is to use 21st-century technology builders which includes SAS software’s of service and types of cloud technologies. Why is that important? Because ease of use to capture that information and pull it in is also equally important. If we want to bring in that information it’s got to be very easy and very simple to bring in, cross reference and then build upon and of course, take back out again. That’s why the only way that you can really do that is by moving to a digital platform. I think it’s impossible without it. A lot of people use spreadsheets, word documents and files and it’s impossible. It’s impossible to manage. It brings an enormous amount of risk to an organisation, especially when that walks out the door. What digital platforms do, such as our assets, is enable that to be used in a coherent way that reduces that risk in the organisation.
The most important thing is to stop that data walking out the door, so we capture that. Then going forward, along with an aging population is also aging assets. The maintenance and frequency of break downs and risks of the business process becomes more and more. So, why is it important? On a secondary level, more is less. We’ve got that understanding, we’ve got that information. Lloyd’s has been that company that has been diagnostic to suppliers and we’re the good guys of the industry. We want to be very collaborative with suppliers and our clients, to be able to use this information in a way which ensures that they can manage maintenance, manage inspection and very importantly, reduce risk. We’re bringing smart solutions into this arena.
There are risk and cost savings in two areas. One area is obviously people, capturing that data perspective. It’s not sitting in heads, it’s sitting in platforms, so there’s a certain cost reduction there and a simplicity to managing that. The bigger one is once you understand the kind of inspection maintenance routines and risk, you reduce the risk of failure in the organisation.
What do I mean by that? Think of a production line, think of an inspection programme. By using these data libraries, bringing in this information and keep enriching, what we’ve seen and what we believe is that you can reduce inspection and maintenance costs by about 50%. That’s just one huge saving there, in one particular area.
The other benefit of managing equipment in this way and by managing information in this way, is you also see the equipment’s lifetime expanding. So, by having timely inspection, by understanding the risk of breakdown before it breaks, means we’re seeing that we can also help those physical assets to last 20% more in life time.
>I think a bit of both to be honest. The right strategy is to have a digital and people strategy. People who think digital and technology are going to fix everything on their own - that’s dangerous. I think it’s a blend of taking great technology and great people - the people who really understand the mandarin of the industry that you’re in. You need to have that level of understanding of that particular industry you’re in.
Oil and Gas has a very unique language which only means certain things to people in this sector. So, you’ve got to maintain and capture that understanding of the sector and that’s the people you’ve got today.
Interestingly, there’s also a new set of skills with ground-breaking technology and people who possess both skills. There’s a whole host of data science and data mining that’s probably not in a lot of these organisations and that needs to be brought in. Then there’s the important piece of the skills of the organisation that’s there, along with companies like Lloyd’s Register who have a heritage and are helping organisations make the most of these assets in new ways.
Read related news: Asset Performance Management: Into a new era of organisational memory
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