R&D
Locusview’s R&D department develops industry standards and supporting technology for supply chain and asset traceability to enable the Digital Thread for energy infrastructure assets.
The Digital Thread is an asset’s dataset that includes information from manufacturing, fabrication, installation, inspections, repairs, and decommissioning. Smart barcodes link the physical asset to its Digital Thread and allow users to scan and access attribute data such as model, size, rating, serial number, and other supporting datasets.
Plastic Pipe
GTI led the development of ASTM F2897, which provides an industry standard for plastic pipe and fitting manufacturers to apply a barcode that provides users with critical asset traceability data such as manufacturer, lot code, diameter, and wall thickness.
Steel Pipe
Locusview led the development of API RP 5MT, which provides a standardized data model for digital material test reports (MTRs), allowing manufacturers to deliver digital product datasets to asset owners instead of scanned PDFs and spreadsheets.
Digital Thread and Barcodes for the Clean Energy Transition
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act will pour billions of dollars into upgrading and expanding the electric grid to support the clean energy transition. Some of this funding will also be directed towards programs that increase the resiliency and security of the grid as described in DOE’s America’s Strategy to Secure the Supply Chain for a Robust Clean Energy Transition.
Energy companies are rising to the clean energy challenge, but are simultaneously facing new challenges including supply chain and labor shortages, cyber security threats, and severe weather events. Part of the solution to these challenges is high quality datasets to support automation, analysis, and risk mitigation. Creating and maintaining high quality datasets from manufacturing through decommissioning provides a Digital Thread and allows stakeholders along the supply chain to add and access traceability information.
An enabling technology for the Digital Thread is smart barcodes which link physical assets with their digital datasets. In order for this technology to gain wide scale adoption, it must be based on industry standards that allow manufacturers, distributors, and asset owners to access and share data in a consistent manner.
Other industries such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare, food, and railroad have implemented industry standards allowing manufacturers to apply barcodes that contain a unique ID, product attributes, and links to supporting datasets including supply chain, testing, and certification.
To bring this technology to the energy industry, Locusview is leading several programs to create industry standards for supply chain and asset traceability.
A new vision for electric distribution
Digitally transform the electric grid with sophisticated barcode scanning technology trusted by EPRI and Portland General Electric.
For more information about smart barcodes and the Digital Thread, please get in touch.