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Successful innovation project: Virtual operations center

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Successful innovation project: Virtual operations center

Meeting virtually became a real problem overnight when Covid-19 hit us all. Epsis together with Equinor, Woodside and with solid support from Innovation Norway wanted to take a closer look at the problem; – “How to create good solutions for integrated teams who work from different locations and meet in a virtual space to ensure a good understanding of the situation and operations.”  The Virtual Operations Center concept was born

Operations center environments are often characterized by the following:

Shift work
24/7 operation
A lot of information to process
Several operations to be followed up more or less simultaneously
Switch between different tasks (analysis, monitoring, project and events)

Throughout the project, together with operative personnel, we have looked at the way of working in various centers (Emergency, Subsea, Logistics, drilling and well, geo operations and telecommunications). Furthermore, we have looked at requirements for further development of Epsis’ software system to be able to support operations regardless of location. The software has been developed based on the needs of operative personnel who work in and in connection with the centers.

Challenges: lack of digital effectiveness and structure

    70+ applications are used daily in medium-sized organizations

  • Workers switch between tasks 20+ times a day
  • Daily work consists of several interruptions from various technologies and through unstructured collaboration
  • The number of available screens is challenging when gaining situational awareness
  • Time is valuable, and wastes of time are notable

The project needs have resulted in the following functional areas in the application:

1. Screen control

The number of screens and screen layouts vary greatly, and in the centers with large screen walls, managing information takes time. It is therefore useful to have an application to manage this

2. Information collections

The number of applications and clicks within various applications to find relevant information for managing a task or a facility is time-consuming. Remembering where things are located/long paths means that you sometimes do not retrieve relevant information from one system or that you store copies locally. It saves time for employees to have one application to go to to find everything they need across documents, processes, tasks and applications

3. Task switching

The everyday working life of these operational environments is made up of structured tasks and more event-oriented tasks that occasionally interrupt a structured task. It takes time to find focus between tasks, and it takes time to find the information you need to perform different types of tasks. It is useful to have a system where everything you need to perform a task is available.

4. Shared understanding of the situation

Everyday work consists of ensuring that everyone who works together can quickly achieve an equal understanding of the situation for various tasks and events. For this, you would like to have environments with shared screens and of course the employees’ own work area. For this, it can be useful to be able to share more than one information element and, not least, that the information that belongs together is placed on the screen surfaces so that it is easy for the recipients to absorb. Enify can help with this.

Result

Find relevant information – across systems
Find information and quickly change the focus – easy to switch between tasks.
Sharing information – sharing sets of links/information
Have one system for navigating many – with a single keystroke
Smart multitasking – Dividing users screens into layouts allows one to work with several applications simultaneously
Always have the same work surface – no matter where you log on from

  1. One team saved 30 min per day.
  2. One team managed to keep the operation running 100% when they had to close the center and move to home office.
  3. The cost of building a virtual operation center vs. a physical one is much more affordable.

Contact us

Get in touch, to know more.

We are here to help you succeed!

Concurrent Engineering

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R&D project – Method for Concurrent Engineering

The Norwegian transport industry’s new methodology within simultaneous design and interdisciplinary collaboration has been developed over four years. The project group summarizes the experiences of using the method and points to the way forward. What have we learned from the methodology, and what should we take forward for the best for the entire transport industry?

Erling Graarud is responsible for the R&D project and explains the background for the method development of faster project implementation;

“In today’s transport projects, the tasks have become more complex, the number of processes and specialists has increased and more subjects and aspects are included. To ensure that all societal goals and other requirements are met, it is important that decisions are made on the broadest possible basis, at the right time, and with the greatest possible understanding of the overall picture. The goal of the R&D project was therefore to find methods that effectively ensure that the right parties are involved and make the right decisions at the right time. To also do this faster, a simultaneity of the work is required, says Graarud.”

Click here to read more: Erfaringer fra Samtidig prosjektering og veien videre | Metier (prosjektbloggen.no)

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Epsis talks at NORWEP digital operations webinar

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Interested in digital solutions for operating oil & gas facilities?

The recordings from Norwep’s webinars where they have put together a number of Norwegian vendors that present some of the technologies and novel approaches in the energy sector are now available.

NORWEP writes the following on their website:
“Norway has always had a reputation for innovation and technology development in the energy sector. Recent developments in innovative digital solutions for operating facilities has been driven by a focus on;

  • improving production,
  • reducing operational and maintenance costs, while at the same time
  • maintaining the safety and integrity of producing assets

To showcase Norway’s capabilities in these areas, NORWEP will host a series of three webinars to present some of these technologies and novel approaches. This is an opportunity for you to hear from the experts and learn from their knowledge and experience.”

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Let’s talk.

We would value learning about you and sharing some experiences!

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Integrated Operation Center

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What is an Integrated Operation Centre?

An Integrated Operations Centre (IOC) is a dedicated environment designed to tackle the business problems that manifest when working with highly collaborative processes. 

The most typical of these is within an operational environment where many dependencies exist between;

Creating a product

Managing the quality of the product

Getting the product out the door efficiently, to the best market conditions available

In what industries do you find Integrated Operation Centers?

Many industries utilise the concept of IOC’s to help with their operations; manufacturing, oil & gas production, energy generation & distribution and so on. The broad roles, time pressures and underlying business issues remain similar but each industry will have a different emphasis.

What does an IOC look like?

 The following simplified diagram shows typical roles and seating within an IOC to maximise collaborative efficiency for operations: 

Integrated Operation Center Roles and layout

Each seat holds a role representative, not the entire team. The individual responsible for the minute to minute operations of the role within.

How does the Center help?

IOC’s operate in very time sensitive environment and if there is friction between these areas or a single failure, then the entire operational process can be compromised leading to massive inefficiencies. There is a need for everyone to see an up to date “big picture”, share a set of common priorities and have the experts at hand to support any breakdown in the process.

IOC’s are built to support the smooth running of critical areas of a real-time business.

Large and smaller centers

Not every IOC is “whole operations” focussed. Some companies may have a need for a smaller centre (or series of centres) to manage a single complex aspect of the business. These can often provide a massive value despite their size:

Planning:
A single planning function needs constant input from a huge range of distributed stakeholders and the ability to push their plans out to the same group. These planning centres have most other roles at the end of a VC rather than in a room together. (Virtual IOC)

Equipment Support:
A series of tiered centres able to support the complexities of machines and technology. Each tier offers a different level of specialisation to provide the most efficient use of resources.

Are you interested in learning more?

We have created the ultimate guide for building operation centers based on experience from 30 worldwide initiatives.

Read more here

Corona situation (Covid-19)

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Corona situation (Covid-19)

Epsis is closely following the global situation in connection with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We as our customers have taken our own measures to keep our staff as safe as possible, and most of us are now working from home. The IT industry is central in keeping some of the wheels rolling in our communities. This also applies to the services that Epsis are providing. We take our social responsibility seriously and work to best meet government requirements whether we are based in Norway, UK, Australia and USA, protect society’s most vulnerable and at the same time deliver on our commitment to our customers. We are grateful to all those working to mitigate the effects of the virus and out thoughts are with all who are being personally affected.

Epsis support & teamwork

We have, in recent weeks experienced that our customers have had an impressive ability to quickly find good solutions for maintaining production and capacity, while meeting the requirements of the authorities. As a result, Epsis remains fully operational and will (for the time being) continuing to provide our full range of support and services in all time zones. Our staff is working from home, in line with the most recent advices of the governments (in Norwegian, UK, US and Australian), while maintaining the same levels of professional services and availability as always.

We have long experience in working remotely without compromising the productivity and our delivery capability. We are used to handling demanding assignments, and as experts we also quickly get up to speed and become productive. We feel we have established the right mechanisms to assist our customers in this demanding situation. If anyone gets sick, we have backup routines to take over the support function. Our team is dedicated to help our customers on remote operations. Please contact help@epsis.com if you have any technical questions.

Client relationship

Our customer relationship is very important to us and we want to help in any way we can. As well as using email correspondence we are happy to talk with you on video conference or telephone. Our team is currently helping customers effectively set up virtual remote operations centres and adapt new ways of working into the operations.

Ways of working & IT security

We use Teams and Yammer as our internal communication platform and start every morning with a virtual coffee meeting. We find it important to talk on a regular basis to lift the team spirit and share tips on how to work smarter remotely. Today we got a reminder: Unfortunately, there are people with bad intentions using this situation to try to get into people’s and businesses system. Remember – Do not click on any links or attachments unless you are 100% sure. If you are wondering call and ask the sender before opening.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns regarding solutions and deliveries on Jan-Erik Nordtvedt / +47 55 92 57 50,- Together is better, even remotely.

Thank you and stay safe, the Epsis Team

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