Strategies for Data-Driven Digital Transformation in the Plant
Equinor’s Cloud-Based Data Platform
Equinor is a broad energy company of 21,000 colleagues committed to turning natural resources into energy in more than 30 countries worldwide. As the largest operator in Norway and international leader in offshore operations and renewable energy, Equinor is shaping the future of energy.
Equinor has created OMNIA; a cloud-based data platform to support their digital roadmap. It covers six programs, cutting across three key enablers – developing digital capabilities and leadership; utilizing the external ecosystem; and increasing data utilization (figure 1).
OPC UA Systematically Supports Data Contextualization
Mr. João Pinheiro, Senior Technical Team Lead at Equinor, states, “The idea behind this platform is to move from silos of data and across our value chain to one common platform that orchestrates all our data across the value chain.”
In the world of data-driven operations, he goes on to say that, “data without any context is quite useless. You need context to ensure that humans and machines understand what the data means in order to be able to use it. So, when you have data in context, you have information, which can be used for analysis and visualization.”
He goes on to explain how Equinor’s business decisions are made faster and better, based on the insights derived from the contextualized and/or analyzed data. All of this forms Equinor’s four pillars to achieving Data-driven Operations: 1) Data, 2) Context, 3) Analysis and Visualization, and 4) Business Decisions.
OPC UA is a connectivity framework for industrial automation data managed by the OPC Foundation. It systematically supports the contextualization of data available from Equinor’s industrial automation and control systems.
