Systematic identification of Flexible Design Opportunities in offshore drilling systems

Systems in industrial fields with large and mostly irreversible investments being exposed to long lifecycles and facing large usage / requirements uncertainty are usually subject to limited strategic planning and reactive behavior by being dealt with once uncertainties unfold. At the same time, it is those systems that could highly profit from embedded flexible design to ease changes in utilization phases and, thereby, avoid large-scale value losses across the lifecycle. Motivated by the circumstances and needs of the offshore drilling industry, this doctoral thesis suggests a methodology that allows the systematic identification of Flexible Design Opportunities (FDOs) in early design phases that can ease upgrade efforts of such systems significantly in utilization phases. Existing methodologies have mostly had a strong focus on specific stages for the identification of FDOs (e. g. recognizing uncertainties, evaluation of flexible designs), hence, lack comprehensiveness to derive the most suitable solutions. The suggested methodology addresses all relevant stages from the identification of a reference layout and baseline design until the derivation of flexible design solutions. In particular, a general procedural and a matrix-based data and execution model fed with elicited data and heuristics guide the process of identifying FDOs. By selecting available choices across relevant domains and matrices, consistent flexible design concepts are generated, which can be assessed, selected and integrated to best performing flexible design solutions. With their integration into the initially defined reference layout, the system is then to better respond to changes when being exposed to unfolding uncertainties in utilization phases. The methodology is demonstrated on an industrially relevant use case of the offshore drilling industry and validated by selected experts of that field.