Many people enjoy knowing every little detail about something, even if it doesn't really correlate directly to them. All the power to them! Personally, I like people to get right to the point; tell me what I need to know - Don't dance around what you're trying to say, or give me so much info it makes my head spin.

Please, please, please just be clear and concise.

I'm pretty sure companies and their staff also want their data straightforward and easy to understand. Not such a large amount of data that drowns them with every tiny detail that isn't relevant, or actionable. Sometimes too much data can become pretty much useless because it would take you hours to filter through it all to find the data you actually do need.

I think it's safe to safe that many of us have experienced different times in our lives that we knew we didn't have all the information; times when we simply knew there was more to the story, or something missing that we should know in order to make an informed decision. Some people call it intuition, others say it's a 'hunch' - call it whatever you like, but either way having that feeling is certainly frustrating at best; potentially even life-threatening at worst.

When it comes to your operations, I hope you don't get that feeling very often - But if you do then we can help.

The cost of distractions in life is high. What can often seem like a minor distraction can have a giant impact on life; a distracted drive to work could cause a crash, distracted while reading email could cause you to miss an important request from the boss, or being distracted while spending time with family could result in a loved one that doesn’t feel heard anymore, or think you care.

When it comes to your operations distractions can cause just as much havoc and loss. Distractions cause the risk of safety of people; and the environments around you, and the health of the bottom line. Those distractions could be losing your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars. Without your eye on the prize you could be risking the sustainability of your organization; here today - gone tomorrow happens all too often these days.

While most oil and gas production is somewhat remote from the office, offshore sites are much more distant. Instead of driving a hundred miles or so in a company truck, your management and production staff are helicoptering across gulfs, seas and oceans to stay at least a couple of days before flying back—at great expense, and safety risk.

There are indeed times when that has to happen. But those times can stay few and far between with reliable, fast, cloud-native production data provided by Emerson in the Zedi IIoT platform that's complete with SaaS and a mobile app.

Digital transformation projects usually require many complex steps. Each of these steps requires a well thought out, budgeted, and highly detailed plan. Who provides that plan will be your companies key to successfully reaching that desired destination for your operations on your time-frame and your budget requirements.

Many companies undervalue the importance of project management as a crucial component for project success. Instead the project(s) become everyone's baby; not one person. Strong leaders prefer to have one person accountable and responsible for the project as a whole; or as some leaders like to say 'one throat to choke' (I write that with a smile on my face and all due respect). This way everyone knows the exact time line, expectations and one person is in charge of the budget so it doesn't run wild.

The world moves pretty fast these days with all the constant change from every direction. To stay ahead of all the crazy it's important to consider all your options and then move quickly to implement your strategy into action.

It wasn't all that long ago many companies were faced with difficult decisions, and few of those difficult decisions are harder than layoffs. It's never an easy decision. But in a downturn, it’s a necessary evil to save the company as a whole—with great hope you can welcome those same talented people back when the inevitable upturn happens.

The hard truth is that before that upturn actually happens many of those talented people will have retired, switched career paths, started their own business or even traded their safety glasses in for sunglasses in a tropical paradise.

Companies can now measure almost every single aspect of business activity due to various analytic tools and management software. Often, they have advanced datasets to explore their performance because there are so many metrics to measure.

While navigating various datasets, anything outside the norm would be considered an anomaly. Different anomalies can have an enormous impact on business decisions, operational results, and management’s ability to respond rapidly and accurately.

The next wave of technological advancements is emerging. New technologies are expected to reduce the number of workers required to perform specific tasks while increasing demand for other skills.

A digital workforce is a workforce with personnel focused on high-value tasks and empowered with actionable data from digital technologies and services that lead to improved decision-making in daily operations. Similarly, a digital worker is considered an individual that applies actionable data from digital technologies and services to make improved decisions, automate manual functions, increase productivity, or convert information into revenue. 

More talent will be retiring in the next couple of years, making it more crucial than ever for you to strategize your workforce by upskilling your people to continue running operations effectively.

To ecstatic employees everywhere, more and more companies are moving from dreaded, time wasting daily site trips, stacks of paper records and mind-numbing manual processes to technology to provide answers that are supported by factual data, automating tasks that are driven by analytics, data trends and in some cases even autonomous actions.

Downturns, and all the crazy in our world today have made it clear that the “change or die” mantra is far too real.

You probably already knew this—but you may be hesitant to act. That's totally understandable since there are several questions about transition, affordability, training, the return on investment and so many others. Then there's the sustainability questions that come into play. Tech changes really fast these days and everyone is searching for the next best thing. While tech continues to quickly develop some people decide they should wait it out until the next hottest and newest change is available.

You may ask yourself; where exactly do you get the best possible return on investment when it comes to industrial tech that will help support your operations profitability and sustainability at the same time without it being out of date in just a few months only to have to start all over again?

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” doesn’t begin to describe winters in Wyoming, Alberta and many other parts of the world. Winter lows average well below zero, whatever scale you’re using. It’s why detailed training, safety, planning and teamwork are literally life-and-death issues as we help keep water, wastewater, gas distribution, and of course oil and gas production flowing - in even the coldest, and hottest areas of the globe.

Ask anyone that works outside in temps around 110 degrees in the complete dust and heat of summer in the Texas, or well below zero in Canada - no one leaves the yard without extensive training, preparation, and a carefully checked list, but there are still many, many safety risks to consider before venturing out.