IM Business Cases WS 19 nov 2014 (2)

On 19 Nov 2014 USPI successfully held an Information Management Business Cases workshop for engineers from the process industry plant engineering supply chain and software suppliers to the sector.

There will be a follow-up workshop in 2015 Q-2 where the results will be deepened. Should you wish to participate in this follow-up workshop, please contact me.

Executive Summary of the workshop held

“67% of directors in capital infrastructure management companies quote information management issues as one of their top 2 priorities...” Clive Deadman, Author of “Strategic Asset Management” (07 March 2010).

“3-5% of value of asset lost each year due to low data quality” Paul Casteleijn survey, Stork.

Productivity in the process industry has been declining during the last decades, both in office based activities such as engineering design and field based activities such as construction management. While there is not a clear consensus on the underlying causes, “non-value adding” activities and opportunities for improvement can readily been identified in the lifecycle. Many opportunities require improved coordination across the supply chain and better integration via a “common process and language” i.e. common work procedures and data standards.

Experience from other industries confirms a strong correlation between standardization and productivity; while other studies challenge the correlation between IT spend and productivity. While the challenges of the process industry do have a technology dimension, the underlying issues are often related to business processes and data, which are poorly specified and managed, and lack the necessary standardization to enable interoperability.

A workshop was held to identify data driven opportunities and to rank them on value and effort. The resultant catalogue of opportunities can be used as input to business improvement planning for companies in the process industries, and will be used by USPI as input to a deep dive workshop in 2015.

The most significant opportunities are to implement processes to “manage Information quality” across the asset lifecycle, especially in the “As Built Process”; and to align the terminology used by owner operators through “class libraries/data dictionaries” and clear “handover requirements”. A significant quick win is to pay more attention to “user maturity” and avoid value destruction by IT systems that are way too complex for the users. Other quick wins were to improve the efficiency of construction and shutdowns via readiness checks and simulation using integrated datasets from multiple disciplines. Lower ranked opportunities include “Manage Asset Configuration”, “Enable collaboration”, “Reuse design data”, “Create equipment catalogue”, “Pool IT solutions”, “Integrate activity planning”, “Reduce standards diversity”, “Design for maintenance”.

Most solutions proposed require leadership by owner-operators and can be realized through smarter leverage of information technology that is already available within organisations, with the value being released by improved business process and data standards.