Next generation of digital operational capabilities

This course will address the development and use of next-generation digital operational capabilities, with a specific focus on remote operations in concrete contexts across different industries. Remote operations represent a key operational capability, typically performed from secure premises in an organization or at a vendor’s location, with the essential support of digital technologies, often remote from what must be monitored or operated. Several capabilities of this type have been developed over the years in different industries, for example remote energy supply, oil and gas, nuclear energy with small modular reactors, aquaculture, cybersecurity, emergency services, and military operations.

Recently, advanced remote capabilities have been developed. Real-time operations, engineering/operational support, and environmental monitoring and other tasks are increasingly performed at greater distances. The primary case for remote operations is usually to limit the number of personnel on a facility and thus limit exposure to hazardous environments, as well as to enable easier and faster access to expert support independently of the location. Ongoing digitalization based on smart sensor networks, drones, Artificial Intelligence (AI), broadband on the sea floor, digital twins etc., gives several opportunities but also new challenges for existing work tasks/capabilities but also for future next-generation operations.

The design, planning, and performance of next-generation operational capabilities such as remote operations requires a multidisciplinary approach to define strategic capabilities of both technical and organizational nature to coordinate the cross-disciplinary functions and sharing of responsibilities between remote and local operations. This involves the development and use of suitable technological solutions, enforcing control-of-work policies, building and further developing competence, ensuring the reliability of remote communications, and not the least identifying and preventing the operational risks and challenges associated with the new capabilities such as health, safety, and environment (HSE) in general and cybersecurity more specifically.

The course will:

• Explore four generic configurations for delivering digital operational capabilities (specifically remote operations), by critically evaluating their advantages, disadvantages, and risks with concrete examples and experiences from different contexts: the remote-control room, the remote collaborative centre, remote at vendor premises, and remote access from anywhere
• Conceptualize operational capabilities for remote operations as an information infrastructure encompassing technical, competence, work processes and governance configurations
• Address the technical, organizational and competence-related challenges in the design, planning, and use of next-generation capabilities from a sociotechnical perspective

The goal of the course is to:

• Expose students to the state of the art in configurations of digital operational capabilities, using remote operations as a primary example in different contexts across different industries
• Enable students to identify and critically assess the technical, organizational, and competence-related challenges in the design, planning, and use of digital operational capabilities
• Foster collaborative student learning through group work and presentations

Knowledge:

• Define the concept of a digital operational capability and situate remote operations within this framework, its features, advantages, and disadvantages (risks)
• Describe how these capabilities have developed and their sources of origin
• Illustrate the basic interests and stakeholders that exist in the field of digital and remote operations
• Describe the development of digital operational capabilities (like remote operations) as an information infrastructure that includes technology, competence, work processes and governance
• Identify the challenges related to scalability and replicability in these capabilities in light of ongoing digitalization initiatives
• Identify the challenges related to collaboration across boundaries (time, domain, space) in light of ongoing digitalization

Skills:

• Determine the basic steps to conduct an ‘as-is’ study of present conditions in an empirical setting in a relevant organization
• Plan the basic change process to take advantage of new digital operational capabilities (e.g., remote configurations)

General competencies:

• Identify and assess the main sociotechnical challenges in a real-world deployment of next-generation operational capabilities for remote operations
• Plan a next-generation operational capability for remote operations in a real-world scenario by deploying an appropriate configuration of the human, technology, work process and governance resources
• Reflect and report on the use of AI-based tools in connection with one’s own work

Lectures, seminars, group work, e-learning, assignments, project work, reflection.

There can be guest lectures in English.