The digital factory

But what lies beneath the jargon sea? And more intriguingly, how do these concepts forecast the trajectory of assets in relation to digitisation?

Today, we are confronted with a world that is often described as VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous). This term has been around for quite some time now and is known beyond the boardroom of the big oil and gas majors and consultancy firms. More recently, the terminology of BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible) has been introduced by Jamais Cascio (American anthropologist, author, and futurist), used more specifically for technology and innovation and is seen as the replacement for VUCA. BANI has emerged as a new framework for explaining the challenges of the digital era.

The need and impact of digitalisation

A commonality can be spotted among all projects and initiatives to cope with the VUCA and BANI environment: the imperative need for agility and resilience in decision-making processes. There is a clear need for digitalisation to deal with the impact of the following:

• Retirement: not only to cover for the coming ‘brain drain’, but also to adapt to the challenges of the young digital natives entering the workforce.
• Competitiveness: introducing less labour-intensive ways of working and realising maximisation of production potential.
• Integration: stand-alone systems need to be ‘talking’ with their environment to adapt end-to-end by the flick of a button on the enterprise level.
• Switch from on-prem to the cloud in case of autonomous operations (operate from anywhere strategies).

As well as the transformation of control rooms, digitalisation trends can be seen on a more personal scale, such as the transformation of desktop computers to laptops, tablets, wearables, and the future of augmented reality goggles. Digitalisation is here to stay.

Digital strategy through collaboration and integration

When discussing integration and digitalisation, Yokogawa refers to a digital factory as a highly automated and interconnected facility within the industrial ecosystem that leverages digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and data analytics to optimise operations, enhance productivity, and enable real-time decision-making.

While a lot of companies are installing their decarbonisation/sustainability managers to bundle initiatives and cope with (upcoming) major changes on a centralised level, Yokogawa sees that the responsibility for digitalisation continues to be spread around the IT and OT organisation. Currently, Yokogawa is working with industrial majors and start-ups toward decarbonisation and has found that working towards a commonly understood concept of the future ‘digital factory’ is key to successfully maximising the impact of digitalisation for all types of organisations and respective maturity levels.

Prior to outlining any strategic approach, it is essential to ascertain the baseline maturity level, setting the stage for informed, targeted planning. Yokogawa’s analysis reveals some key challenges, such as scattered data, islands of information, inconsistent processes, and outdated technology. Collaboration between IT and OT also sheds light on where a company stands. Despite each company’s uniqueness, many face similar hurdles in managing complexity and shared duties while keeping operations smooth and safe. A tailored digitalisation plan, shaped by diverse expertise, can address these issues. However, the task is too vast for a single integrator; a collective effort from partners and the entire value chain is crucial for success.

¹ML (machine learning), LM (language model), RUPT (rapid, unpredictable, paradoxical, and tangled), TUNA (turbulent, uncertain, novel, ambiguous).

This article was originally published in the May 2024 issue of Hydrocarbon Engineering magazine. To read the full article, sign in or register for a free subscription.

Written by Nienke Gerridzen, Yokogawa

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/special-reports/01052024/the-digital-factory/