A perfect marriage of calm aesthetic and knowledge sharing, the room looks to provides a place where tech and ideas can meet.
The 4IR Center’s Galaxy Room gives participants an immersive experience during Technical Service HR’s weekly G-Talk series.
Interesting things are happening on the 13th floor of Aramco’s Al-Midra building in Dhahran. The Galaxy Room, true to its name, appears to be at the center of it all.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) Center’s Galaxy Room is a perfect marriage of calm aesthetic and knowledge sharing functionality, in a space where technology can do the talking. The room is a cutting-edge business center in service to the center’s focus on technology — an intimate space to host innovative knowledge sharing and idea generation sessions.
Ahmad A. Al Sa’adi, executive vice president of Technical Services, noted, “The center was created to help ensure access and utilization of the latest digital technologies to support various company business goals.”
Where Ideas Meet Technology
Technical Services HR (TS HR) is ensuring the Galaxy Room fulfills its intended function as a space for ideas and tech to meet. In TS HR’s weekly “G-Talk” series, which started in September 2022, Aramco professionals working on technology applications are invited to address both a small, in-person audience, and a much larger virtual audience through a live-stream videocast.
Abdulrahman A. Asiri, head of TS HR, noted that, “The Galaxy Room capabilities are enabling us to quickly adapt to changes in the work environment, engage a larger remote workforce with innovative ways to improve their learning experience, while delivering technical solutions to sustain the company’s business.”
Anas Safar, a Process and Control Systems Department (P&CSD) engineer, was part of the team that received the Saudi Aramco President’s Excellence Award for patented Smart Flare technology. His team’s G-Talk session, “Smart Flare Solution,” shared the application of this technology to address major technical challenges such as low smokeless efficiency and flare tip integrity. The session was one of the most well attended G-Talk sessions to date.
Safar explained, “Sharing knowledge in the Galaxy Room, with the mix of participants attending in-person and virtually, was an enriching experience for all of us.”
The Galaxy Room uses immersive technology to improve processes.
Machine Learning
Omar Naeem, a P&CSD senior data scientist and team lead for implementing machine learning for process automations, was the first G-Talk presenter hosted in the Galaxy Room. His knowledge sharing session on “Machine Learning for Process Operations” remains one of the series’ most popular sessions.
“Aramco is globally known for oil and gas processes — we’re a process focused company,” said Naeem. “Machine learning is a very specific part of artificial intelligence utilizing models that continuously learn from process data. Machine learning is there to assist us at every level and improve our operations.”
Innovation Skill Sets
The Galaxy Room has also been used effectively to build employee innovation skill sets as part of the promotion of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Technology and Intelligent Automation. Ali Al-Khwaildi, an RPA solution architect with the RPA Group in IT, presented a G-Talk on “RPA Intelligent Automation.”
Al-Khwaildi said: “We encourage all employees to think of digital robotics as something within their reach, as innovation that they can easily deploy. There is the potential to have a digital robot for every employee, with the robot performing the routine, repetitive, standardized work that is most easily outsourced to a digital robot.
“Our goal is to scale up the RPA automation throughout the company and to encourage employees at all levels to think in terms of robotics innovation. It’s within everyone’s grasp,” he said.
Examples of RPA applications include robotics tasked with engineering drawing reviews, vessel activity log tracking, and low-value material purchasing.
Since the inception of weekly G-Talk series in September, TS HR has hosted 14 events highlighting innovative technologies for more than 2,500 participants.
Beyond weekly G-Talks, the Galaxy Room has functioned as the venue for TS HR’s “Instant VR” events. These events are an open invitation for professionals from across business lines to experience in-house developed virtual reality (VR) experiences. TS HR’s VR resources are used to train technical professionals.
— The Arabian Sun: January 11, 2023