Data quality and the exchange of data through the lifecycle of the assets are hot topics in oil and gas. Part 1 of the 2009 ISO 8000 suite of data quality standards is grandly titled ‘Master Data: Exchange of characteristic data: Syntax, semantic coding, and conformance to data specification.’ Since then the standard has grown to include quality management, frameworks, data provenance, accuracy and more. Unfortunately, awareness of the standard is appallingly low, a result of poor marketing by ISO. This is set to change in the oil and gas sector with the inclusion of ISO 8000 in Saudi Arabia’s ‘Vision 2030’ industrial strategy. Imports to the Kingdom will shortly be required to be accompanied by an electronic technical specification that conforms to ISO 8000 and major corporations will include the requirement to purchase orders.
The new Part 115 draft standard for quality identifiers will simplify the exchange of technical specifications and may bring a breakthrough in ISO 8000 awareness. Part numbers are common across industry, but such identifiers are not necessarily unique. The new identifier includes a reference to the legal owner of the identifier. A bearing reference 6204 could be resolved to any number of manufacturers, but a bearing reference SKF:6204 can only be resolved to SKF. SKF will own the rights to the SKF prefix just as it owns the domain name for their website. Likewise, companies will have a unique identifier*. The finance industry is also on board and will include this as its legal entity identifier in the upcoming MIFID2 reporting mandate which comes into force in 1/01/2018.
In oil and gas, a pilot study between an oil major, six international component manufacturers and a software vendor is demonstrating use of ISO 8000 in reducing the cost of exchanging and maintaining data throughout the asset lifecycle. Technical specifications for products, in multiple languages, can be stored in a common, free-to-access cloud platform, so that the data is available as and when required. This pilot is being carried out as a use case for another standard, ISO 18101, the oil and gas asset management and operations and maintenance interoperability (OGI) standard. More on ISO 18101 progress in December.
* So for MRO Insyte this will be UK.GOV.companieshouse.E&W:06236771.
Peter Eales is director of MRO Insyte and a committee member on ISO 8000 and ISO 18101.
Those interested in oil and gas quality standards should also be cognizant of Energistics’ National data repository data quality guidelines.
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