Some of the world’s largest energy companies have now signed an Industry Collaboration Agreement to set an industry standard for a digital inventory ecosystem.
ConocoPhillips, Equinor, Shell, TotalEnergies and Vår Energi, together with the software company Fieldnode, pledged to develop a digital foundation to build a network for supply of spare parts produced on demand through additive manufacturing technology.
The partnership, which will last for two years, aims to scale up the digital ecosystem in order to significantly cut lead times, physical inventories, total cost of ownership, materials waste, and shipping distances while also enhancing the supply chain’s efficiency and security.
The technology to achieve the aforementioned advantages is already in place, but in order to scale this up, the collaboration’s partners feel that a fit-for-purpose standard process must be established in order to use the technology and conduct business in the new ecosystem. As a result, they have joined forces to work on the problems that would benefit the entire energy sector.
Some of the issues that are intended to be addressed in the collaborative project include standardization around qualifying processes, a new business model that supports mass customization, and improved total cost of ownership for the client vs. conventional volume-based incentives.
To ensure that the entire industry can profit from this transformation, the collaboration’s partners intend to gradually invite their current suppliers, independent additive manufacturers, and other suppliers to collaborate on the platform over the course of the two years in order to achieve the goals they have set.
The project partners hope to evaluate the technological and business solutions as well as add material to the digital inventory by working with the aforementioned organizations.
The foundational technical solution is the Fieldnode platform which was developed through a Joint Industry Project with Fieldnode, Equinor and TotalEnergies.
The platform facilitates efficient and resilient operation of supply networks to support the oil and gas operators to share limited supply chain resources.
The collaboration agreement gives the opportunity to further develop needed industry standards to scale this and thereby secure supply of spare parts and at the same time reduce the environmental footprint.
