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Abstract Drilling automation promises to reduce costs, increase safety margins, and improve the overall efficiency of drilling operations whilst maintaining a high-quality wellbore. However, realizing this vision necessitates that components which acquire, process, provide intelligence for "situational awareness," and automatically execute instructions, share complete information. Effective decision support capabilities and the automated control of the drilling process can only occur with seamless communication based on standards that provide interoperability through an event-driven architecture. Many standards already exist in both the oil and gas and other manufacturing process industries. Yet, the lack of adoption of these standards and best practices is predominantly due to the fear of intellectual property being compromised. We have witnessed through message-based standards the mobile handheld market's unprecedented proliferation of applications that will automate just about anything for your PDA (think Apple Inc.'s "There's an app for that"). Independent software vendors provide solutions that work seamlessly to interconnect business processes and other software systems enabled by the standards developed and adopted as a result of the Internet and the service-oriented architecture (SOA) movement. Key to this development has been the protection of individuals’ intellectual property through the encapsulation of processing and control logic. Harvesting innovation from these next-generation solution developers requires standardized messaging architectures and communication protocols. This paper will examine several industry segments to highlight how standardization at the level of interconnectivity has affected both their interoperability and innovation. Business models that promote and reward open innovation will ultimately drive solutions for automation. But interoperability will drive more than just automation; it is the key to shattering the myth around service complexity. Protecting intellectual property (IP) requires encapsulation of process and control logic and the adoption of appropriate interface standards. Standards enable the prospect of greater interoperability, reduce system complexity through modular packaging, and drive innovation.
Andreas et al. (Tue,) studied this question.