On the Automation of Managing and Retrieving Versions of Subsea Pipeline Installation Process

Abstract

Subsea Pipeline Installation (SPI) business process depends on several contextual parameters, such as the weather conditions, the sea depth and the pipeline length. Due to this context dependency, several versions of SPI process have to be defined each corresponding to the right process according to contextual parameter values. Consequently, companies involved in SPI process face some challenges in such a multi-version environment. In fact, they must manage versions and retrieve the appropriate SPI process version according to a given context. These challenges are further complicated due to the lack of guidelines that assist them in this delicate task. In this paper, we recommend a new software tool called “Version Management and Retrieval” (VMR) to automate the management and the retrieval of process versions and illustrate his automation within the SPI process. On the one hand, VMR assists companies in the definition, the updating and the deletion of versions of SPI and on the other hand, it enhances each SPI process version with semantic aspects featuring its use context. This semantic aspect is helpful to retrieve the appropriate SPI process version from a given situation. The experimental evaluation of VMR shows promising results.