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Industrial Digital Transformation
Our vision is to produce knowledge in close collaboration with industrial stakeholders
Thomas Østerlie
Increased availability and use of digital data hold the potential to transform how organizations work and collaborate as well as trans- forming their products and services. Yet, digital trans- formation is not easy. Both experience and research show that digital transfor- mation frequently fall short of meeting expectations.
We have pursued our vision and scientific objective through a series of studies and projects throughout Sirius’ lifecycle. During 2021, we pursued our research through two ongoing projects. These projects demonstrate the breadth of our research, from innovation to activities oriented towards basic research.
Digitalization of LCI exchange
This project addresses the problem complex associated with digitalization of LCI exchange. It is conducted in close collaboration with key industry stakeholders through our participation in the NORSOK Z-TI expert group.
Background. Structured and machine-readable life-cycle information (LCI) is a pre-requisite for the transition to data-centric and -driven approaches to design, construction, operations, and maintenance of oil and gas installations. Yet, much of it is today stored and exchanged between companies’ internal legacy systems in form of unstructured data such as digital documents and images. What exists
of structure information exchange is between proprietary systems on formats governed by single providers rather than as standards at the industry level.
While there is shared understanding of the need for structured and machine-readable LCI standards throughout the oil and gas industry, there is little to no coherence across companies to jointly solve central challenges associated with this. The result is that digitalization of LCI exchange is driven through disparate activities within individual enterprises, through larger capital expense projects or across various joint industry initiatives.
Results. This joint work has resulted in two innovations so far: (1) a novel standardization strategy and (2) a mecha- nism for industry-wide coordination of standardization. These two innovations are part of the NORSOK national strategy for digitalization of LCI exchange, to be approved during spring 2022.
Future work will focus on evaluating and improving upon the innovations, as well as further development and detailing of key principles underpinning the national digi- talization strategy. There is also ongoing work to introduce
There are many reasons for this, but an often-overlooked aspect is the need to cultivate the organizational precondi- tions necessary for realizing digital data and technologies’ transformative potential. What these preconditions
entail in practice varies greatly, and remains object of much scientific scrutiny across disciplines concerned with current shifts towards data-centric and -driven forms of work and organizing.
Our vision is to produce knowledge in close collaboration with industrial stakeholders, that
(1) inform collaborating companies in planning and organizing for digital transformation, and
(2) advance scientific knowledge.
We pursue this vision through active engagement with digital transformation initiatives, where we apply our methods and theoretical frameworks to address important and difficult challenges and issues. Our focus is the relationship between social and technical factors during development, implementation, and use of digital data and technologies.
Our scientific objective is to develop empirically grounded insights and theory on digital transformation in general, with particular emphasis on transitions towards data- centric and -driven forms of work and organizing. We pursue this across multiple levels of scale from micro-level studies of data-centric work practices, via adoption and implementation of tools and data at the company level, to large-scale technological change at the industry level.
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