Digitalisation and automation for the development of modern engineering workflows

Abstract

Automation, as part of the Energy Industry’s Digital Transformation, is producing significant time savings in modern engineering workflows whilst minimising opportunity for human error. A challenge we face is ensuring these automated workflows are accessible to people in the industry without programming experience. Xodus’ solution to this problem is FLUX. FLUX works as an object-oriented, ‘no-code’, web-based platform which tracks, stores and executes both technical and non-technical workflows. Workflows are first automated in-house by developing scripts, which are then hosted on FLUX allowing them to be easily shared across the business without requiring programming knowledge. A popular use case for FLUX is in the concept engineering phase of a project when performing parametric analyses. Multiple simulation cases (typically thousands) assessing all the different possible combinations of design parameters can be interrogated at once. FLUX can then automatically output an interactive parallel coordinate plot to highlight the impact of each parameter on the overall system. Platforms such as FLUX are an effective solution to increasing accessibility to automation for the industry via ‘no-code’ mechanisms, the ability to interface through an intuitive digital platform where project data is stored, exchanged and analysed through automated calculations is a step forward in engineering workflow efficiency.