Epsis

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Successful innovation project: Virtual operations center

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Epsis Successful innovation project: Virtual operations center

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.

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