Capex-Free Production Facilities Optimization Opportunities by Exploiting Installed Automation Infrastructure and Unused Functionalities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose David De Sousa Drumond

Abstract Operational Excellence and Automation Excellence go hand in hand when it comes to enabling process optimization and cost-reduction opportunities in Upstream Oil & Gas Operations. As part of our Digital Journey in the Upstream Business, multiple streams and workflows have been created to successfully identify and explore the use of new technologies to foster collaboration, achieve higher levels of efficiency, lower operating costs, maximize production and asset integrity, improve decision making, and lower the carbon footprint of all of our exploration and production activities. While our Digital Journey has been highly successful in identifying, assessing and implementing new technologies and novel solutions, it has also made very clear, during the development of business-cases’, that a rather big number of existing and older facilities were not going to be good cost-effective candidates for the deployment of many of the identified solutions and technologies. As an established and rooted operator with a large number of aging facilities, these presented an additional challenge to dig deeper and look further for solutions to cover all of these remaining assets, no matter how old or small they could be.

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 04002
Author(s):  
A.E. Bogomolov ◽  
A.S. Kreymer ◽  
L.E. Popok

Modern approaches to the automation of business processes are increasingly confronted with questions of increase of efficiency of use of available computing resources. The transition to cloud computing technology makes the company to revise approaches to the assessment of their own capabilities and look for ways to reduce operating costs, it does not complicate the process of information infrastructure management. In the competitive environment of the organization following the path optimization of capital and operating costs through the introduction of new technologies, as well as through the transition and migration to a more cost-effective technologies.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1388-1408
Author(s):  
Asim Sinan Yuksel ◽  
Ibrahim Arda Cankaya ◽  
Sadi Fuat Cankaya

Creating and updating meal tags, printing them on small-sized papers raise the costs, cause workload and affect the service quality negatively at the hotels with all-you-can-eat buffet system. Over the last few years, we have seen that many hotels started to make use of tablets to improve the service quality, decrease the costs, provide customers ability to order foods, make reservations, manage their rooms, etc. Going paperless and including more features by adopting new technologies increase the quality of service, help customer's and staff's decision-making processes more effective, improve customer and service personnel experience. In this chapter, authors designed and developed a flexible, cost effective, easy-to-use, customer-friendly and staff oriented paperless buffet management system for the restaurants that have all-you-can-eat buffet. Through this system, they aimed to achieve enhanced customer service, increased efficiency and customer satisfaction; save time, paper and printing costs; provide environmental benefits and efficient buffet management.


Author(s):  
Asim Sinan Yuksel ◽  
Ibrahim Arda Cankaya ◽  
Sadi Fuat Cankaya

Creating and updating meal tags, printing them on small-sized papers raise the costs, cause workload and affect the service quality negatively at the hotels with all-you-can-eat buffet system. Over the last few years, we have seen that many hotels started to make use of tablets to improve the service quality, decrease the costs, provide customers ability to order foods, make reservations, manage their rooms, etc. Going paperless and including more features by adopting new technologies increase the quality of service, help customer's and staff's decision-making processes more effective, improve customer and service personnel experience. In this chapter, authors designed and developed a flexible, cost effective, easy-to-use, customer-friendly and staff oriented paperless buffet management system for the restaurants that have all-you-can-eat buffet. Through this system, they aimed to achieve enhanced customer service, increased efficiency and customer satisfaction; save time, paper and printing costs; provide environmental benefits and efficient buffet management.


Author(s):  
Natalya Ivanovna Shaposhnikova ◽  
Alexander Aleksandrovich Sorokin

The article consideres the problems of determining the need to modernize the base stations of the cellular network based on the mathematical apparatus of the theory of fuzzy sets. To improve the quality of telecommunications services the operators should send significant funding for upgrading the equipment of base stations. Modernization can improve and extend the functions of base stations to provide cellular communication, increase the reliability of the base station in operation and the functionality of its individual elements, and reduce the cost of maintenance and repair when working on a cellular network. The complexity in collecting information about the equipment condition is determined by a large number of factors that affect its operation, as well as the imperfection of obtaining and processing the information received. For a comprehensive assessment of the need for modernization, it is necessary to take into account a number of indicators. In the structure of indicators of the need for modernization, there were introduced the parameters reflecting both the degree of aging and obsolescence(the technical gap and the backlog in connection with the emergence of new technologies and standards). In the process of a problem solving, the basic stages of decision-making on modernization have been allocated. Decision-making on the need for modernization is based not only on measuring information that takes into account the decision-makers, but also on linguistic and verbal information. Therefore, to determine the need for upgrading the base stations, the theory of fuzzy sets is used, with the help of which experts can be attracted to this issue. They will be able to formulate additional fuzzy judgments that help to take into account not only measuring characteristics, but also poorly formalized fuzzy information. To do this, the main indicators of the modernization need have been defined, and fuzzy estimates of the need for modernization for all indicators and a set of indicators reflecting the need for upgrading the base stations have been formulated.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Bushra Mahadin

Purpose-This paper aims to investigate factors that affect customer switching from Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEV’s) to Hybrid Electrical Vehicles (HEV’s), in Jordan for the period of (2010-2014).Design/methodology/approach-A self-administered survey was hand-delivered to the targeted sample of car users in Jordan. The authors delivered 400 questionnaires to customers, from which 333 were deemed valid for the analysis, corresponding to the percentage of (83.25%) which indicates the validity of the study. Findings- There was no difference in switching behavior between (ICEV’s) and (HEV’s) based on gender in the Jordanian market. Fuel consumption efficiency was the number one variable that supports the switching behavior towards (HEV's), followed by Eco friendliness, lower taxes and technological features. Price and the current trend in the market were the least supporting factors. In addition to that the perception of the battery life of (HEV's), limited choices in the market, lack of information and fear of the relatively new technology were the major hindering factors of choosing an (HEV).Research limitations-Future research needs to investigate other factors that may affect customers’ behavior such as perceived image, trust, and subjective norms. Future research should investigate into the importance of environmental awareness and new technologies, and gender differences in behavior. From an international marketing standpoint, comparative studies between Jordanian and non-Jordanian customers are potential areas of future research for international marketing strategies and cross-cultural consumer behaviour analysis. Practical implications-The paper identifies the determinants of switching behavior. marketers should focus addressing customers concerns in terms of providing enough information and building awareness towards the technology and it's benefits towards the society and the environment.Originality/value-Our study is one of the few in Jordan that investigates the switching behavior towards vehicles technology. Our study is thought to have made a modest contribution to consumer behaviour literature and, specifically, for decision making process. It offers marketers insights into the determinants of switching behavior towards the hybrid vechicle technology and how this contribute to consumers’ decision making process and attitudes to achieve the intended behavioural outcomes


Author(s):  
Guang Zou ◽  
Kian Banisoleiman ◽  
Arturo González

A challenge in marine and offshore engineering is structural integrity management (SIM) of assets such as ships, offshore structures, mooring systems, etc. Due to harsh marine environments, fatigue cracking and corrosion present persistent threats to structural integrity. SIM for such assets is complicated because of a very large number of rewelded plates and joints, for which condition inspections and maintenance are difficult and expensive tasks. Marine SIM needs to take into account uncertainty in material properties, loading characteristics, fatigue models, detection capacities of inspection methods, etc. Optimising inspection and maintenance strategies under uncertainty is therefore vital for effective SIM and cost reductions. This paper proposes a value of information (VoI) computation and Bayesian decision optimisation (BDO) approach to optimal maintenance planning of typical fatigue-prone structural systems under uncertainty. It is shown that the approach can yield optimal maintenance strategies reliably in various maintenance decision making problems or contexts, which are characterized by different cost ratios. It is also shown that there are decision making contexts where inspection information doesn’t add value, and condition based maintenance (CBM) is not cost-effective. The CBM strategy is optimal only in the decision making contexts where VoI > 0. The proposed approach overcomes the limitation of CBM strategy and highlights the importance of VoI computation (to confirm VoI > 0) before adopting inspections and CBM.


Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 1051
Author(s):  
Jonattan Gallegos-Catalán ◽  
Zachary Warnken ◽  
Tania F. Bahamondez-Canas ◽  
Daniel Moraga-Espinoza

Orally inhaled drug products (OIDPs) are an important group of medicines traditionally used to treat pulmonary diseases. Over the past decade, this trend has broadened, increasing their use in other conditions such as diabetes, expanding the interest in this administration route. Thus, the bioequivalence of OIDPs is more important than ever, aiming to increase access to affordable, safe and effective medicines, which translates into better public health policies. However, regulatory agencies leading the bioequivalence process are still deciding the best approach for ensuring a proposed inhalable product is bioequivalent. This lack of agreement translates into less cost-effective strategies to determine bioequivalence, discouraging innovation in this field. The Next-Generation Impactor (NGI) is an example of the slow pace at which the inhalation field evolves. The NGI was officially implemented in 2003, being the last equipment innovation for OIDP characterization. Even though it was a breakthrough in the field, it did not solve other deficiencies of the BE process such as dissolution rate analysis on physiologically relevant conditions, being the last attempt of transferring technology into the field. This review aims to reveal the steps required for innovation in the regulations defining the bioequivalence of OIDPs, elucidating the pitfalls of implementing new technologies in the current standards. To do so, we collected the opinion of experts from the literature to explain these trends, showing, for the first time, the stakeholders of the OIDP market. This review analyzes the stakeholders involved in the development, improvement and implementation of methodologies that can help assess bioequivalence between OIDPs. Additionally, it presents a list of methods potentially useful to overcome some of the current limitations of the bioequivalence standard methodologies. Finally, we review one of the most revolutionary approaches, the inhaled Biopharmaceutical Classification System (IBCs), which can help establish priorities and order in both the innovation process and in regulations for OIDPs.


Author(s):  
Courtney Celian ◽  
Veronica Swanson ◽  
Maahi Shah ◽  
Caitlin Newman ◽  
Bridget Fowler-King ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Neurorehabilitation engineering faces numerous challenges to translating new technologies, but it is unclear which of these challenges are most limiting. Our aim is to improve understanding of rehabilitation therapists’ real-time decision-making processes on the use of rehabilitation technology (RT) in clinical treatment. Methods We used a phenomenological qualitative approach, in which three OTs and two PTs employed at a major, technology-encouraging rehabilitation hospital wrote vignettes from a written prompt describing their RT use decisions during treatment sessions with nine patients (4 with stroke, 2 traumatic brain injury, 1 spinal cord injury, 1 with multiple sclerosis). We then coded the vignettes using deductive qualitative analysis from 17 constructs derived from the RT literature and the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). Data were synthesized using summative content analysis. Results Of the constructs recorded, the five most prominent are from CFIR determinants of: (i) relative advantage, (ii) personal attributes of the patients, (iii) clinician knowledge and beliefs of the device/intervention, (iv) complexity of the devices including time and setup, and (v) organizational readiness to implement. Therapists characterized candidate RT as having a relative disadvantage compared to conventional treatment due to lack of relevance to functional training. RT design also often failed to consider the multi-faceted personal attributes of the patients, including diagnoses, goals, and physical and cognitive limitations. Clinicians’ comfort with RT was increased by their previous training but was decreased by the perceived complexity of RT. Finally, therapists have limited time to gather, setup, and use RT. Conclusions Despite decades of design work aimed at creating clinically useful RT, many lack compatibility with clinical translation needs in inpatient neurologic rehabilitation. New RT continue to impede the immediacy, versatility, and functionality of hands-on therapy mediated treatment with simple everyday objects.


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