Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TALENT SWARM (7D Collaborative Work Environment for Project Lifecycle Management (PLM) of Complex Industrial Assets)

Teaser

Talent Swarm®, by DYNATEC, offers a unique and immersive 7D Collaborative Work Environment (CWE), optimizing the overall asset and operational performance of asset-intensive companies over the world – particularly in the environmental, energy, and petrochemical industries...

Summary

Talent Swarm®, by DYNATEC, offers a unique and immersive 7D Collaborative Work Environment (CWE), optimizing the overall asset and operational performance of asset-intensive companies over the world – particularly in the environmental, energy, and petrochemical industries. It uses Open Source and international ISO data standards, a cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) structure, and Modelica® simulation and Blockchain security technology to give engineers access to a digital rendering of an industrial plant – a Digital Twin – which they can assess in real time or ‘fast forward’ for improved safety and to better monitor, plan and predict maintenance operations. Some have described it as an “Industrial SimCity” or “BIM for Industry 4.0”.

Comparable studies in other fields estimate that a 30% reduction in the cost of Maintenance and Operation are achievable with the use of Digital Twins. 80% of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of an industrial asset occurs during the operational phase, which translates to 24% of the TCO of a plant. This represents more than its initial cost of design and construction. These cost reductions result from:
1. Safer & more efficient operation from better project management and detailed real-time monitoring, avoiding dangerous situations, improvement in cycle times and better understanding of customer needs, faster response to market desires for enhancements to existing products and operations by simulating operations in the virtual world, and the collation of documentation spread out across departments, formats and devices – reducing human error and duplication.
2. Predictive maintenance that repairs equipment before and only if needed and avoids unscheduled and costly shutdowns by storing historical performance and anticipating breakdowns. The Open Source international standards platform integrates easily with future Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) modules for even higher efficiency.
3. Sharing expensive global talent among all the facilities by addressing the costly need for expert engineers to travel to far-flung locations, giving them autonomy in a world which is ever-more remote-work based -- or, as Dynatec CEO Jim Novack puts it, giving engineers to power to work ‘anyplace, anywhere, anytime, from any device’. Talent Swarm’s unique offering is the combination of digital twin technology with a gamified, fully immersive collaborative work environment, which is not only more effective because of better planning and cost reduction, but is also much more attractive to potential future staff in a highly competitive skilled labor market.

The company was awarded €72.000 euros earlier this year to develop a feasibility study of the readiness of the technology in order to enter the market and for the organization to scale up industrial activity. Dynatec is targeting a niche section of the Project Lifecycle Management (PLM) market most prevalent in European countries - particularly France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Finland and Norway - related to Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, Energy and the Environment. When added to the North American share of the industry in the United States and Canada, the overall market size reaches €1.74bn. Dynatec has outlined its aim to secure 3% of this market share by its existing favourable reputation in the talent outsourcing business with clients that own and operate industrial plants. More specifically, the company aims to increase the size of its business to more than €10m per year within the next 7 years, reaching a size comparable with that currently held by Aras Corp - widely recognised as one of the most specialised companies in the PLM field.

Work performed

During the feasibility study, Talent Swarm undertook a risk assessment to uncover the biggest potential political, environmental and social threats to the sustained development of the project – ranging from the newer, collaborative working model, to the ambitious challenge of a market with established players and countries with different and beneficial financial contexts.

This work then continued through an assessment of any potential legal impediments and the need to safeguard intellectual property, and consideration of how the company could scale up effectively and what such a scale up would look like over the next eight years. Similarly, following additional research, there was a more detailed study of the current market, and an explanation of where Talent Swarm would fit – and how it stretched the current state of affairs and document its advantages over competitors.

But the crucial piece of work during the study was a series of focused interviews with both business experts and a selection of current and future clients. These conversations allowed Talent Swarm to shape the business and software / product offer into a form that would be most attractive to other industrial plants. This essential period of industrial learning revealed:
- For most clients, their initial priority is to have updated and accurate 2D or 3D plans of their facilities. These then become the foundation for further digital development.
- Budgets are very restricted and the relatively low cost and fast execution of the scanning phase, compared to tedious manual measurements, made them choose our services.
- Although they seem truly intrigued by the immersive environment platform, at this time those capabilities are considered advanced and have been tabled for future consideration. Further access to demos and studies of real implementation among clients will help support future decision-making.
- Talent Swarm is a service, not a competitor. Some of the surveyed clients explained that their current Digital Twin offering, General Electrics’ Predix platform, made them uncomfortable because their private data was managed and held by a company that could then compete with them in the industrial market. Talent Swarm gives customers peace of mind by emphasizing that the data belongs to the customer – as such the Talent Swarm platform is supportive to their businesses, not combative.

Consulting and prototyping with commercial clients also revealed the challenge of estimating the time necessary for 3D scanning from plans and photos received from the client. In the case of one customer, Ravago, the actual scanning time was 50% more than initially estimated, due to the multiple levels of the plant. Given that the initial estimate was 2 days, this was not a major setback, but rather a lesson learned for the future. In short, it is an absolute requirement to walk the plant to be scanned prior to the scanning work itself to obtain an accurate estimate of the time required. Similarly, Talent Swarm learned that different scanners are needed to properly scan all the areas of the plant – a high-precision 3D laser mounted on a tripod, which is good for existing plants but cannot always be set up in tight areas. In those hard-to-reach areas smaller hand-held scanners are needed to avoid missing critical areas to be scanned. In plants where 3D plans already exist, and lower resolution is acceptable to create “As-Built” plans, a different model of portable backpack scanner is ideal.

Following advice from business experts, in order to further segment offerings to increase the chances of landing digitalization projects from clients, Talent Swarm has elected to segment the offering according to the following principles:
- “Divide and Conquer” Scan Smaller Areas: Instead of digitalizing an entire industrial plant, ask the client to determine the part or precise section of the plant that is critical to monitor closely, even down to the Component

Final results

As above, the interviews with key stakeholders revealed the most valued and the most innovative elements of the Talent Swarm software package. Without question, the combination of Project Lifecycle Management (PLM) techniques with a fully-explorable, gamified Digital Twin working environment which updates and responds to real-time changes on functioning plants emerges as the key progress beyond the state of the art. Gartner, one of the most prestigious market research companies, has identified Digital Twins and Immersive Environments as 2 of their chosen “Top Ten Tech Trends” of 2019. Client conversations reveal this model is such a disruptive break from current standards that Talent Swarm has adapted its strategy to provide time for clients to “get their feet wet” and progressively absorb Talent Swarm’s offerings and have full understanding, control and internal buy-in over their respective journeys to scale up from:
• 3D (3D Plans)
• 4D (Time Management of the Plant)
• 5D (Cost Control and Vendor Management)
• 6D (Facilities Management down to individual components and IoT data streams), all the way to
• 7D (Sentient Systems, industrial systems capable of diagnosing their own “health” and independently interacting with the market, ordering parts and scheduling maintenance).

It is expected that by the end of the project – which runs between 2021 and 2027 – annual income will have increased by 2500% (from €2m to €50m), while the number of plants will have increased from 50 to 1,100. In addition, the number of avatars will have increased from 750 to 16,500. This leads to a corresponding creation of between 100 and 167 direct jobs, and between 181 and 307 indirect jobs, and positions both the Talent Swarm consortium and DYNATEC as the leading partner at the forefront of job creation in a world increasingly defined by remote-working, digital manipulation and rapid prototyping. It is expected that Talent Swarm will be fully functioning as a profit-making product by 2023.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.talentswarm.com.