Identification and evaluation of innovation opportunities emerging from new technology in the Pre-Fabrication part of Norwegian Offshore yards

Abstract

The Oil and Gas industry is the largest industry in Norway, making the supplying industry an important and profitable industry. Norwegian Offshore yards provide the oil and gas companies with products and services to develop, build, maintain and demolish offshore platforms, onshore plants, ships and other equipment.

Competition is big between the offshore yards, and other countries’ providing cheaper products steals customers, making it important for the Norwegian yards to be innovative and upgrade their companies to make them more competitive. With all the globalization that has occurred the competition has gotten even harder, and an unstable Oil price resulting in an unsecure market for the offshore industry, the pressure and expectations are even higher for the Norwegian Offshore yard to deliver.

A huge part of being innovative in the industry of pre-fabrication is to implement and use new technologies. These technologies help to reduce the delivery time, make the production more efficient, reduce the costs and increase the quality.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify and evaluate the potential for using new technologies at Norwegian Offshore Yards, helping them to stay innovative, be able to compete with foreign yards, and maintain the industry inside Norway.

Some of the technologies that have emerged after research for the thesis, and potentially can be implemented is digitalisation, by using cloud storage and cloud computing, sensorization with use of smart sensors, measuring real-time data, autonomization by making the machines and equipment automated and start using robots, and connectivity, connecting all the machines, devices and sensors together through internet in combination with AI. All of this combined has the potential to in the future result in a fully automated pre-fabrication, with no human interference, only human supervision.