In early phases of system design the offshore drilling industry faces significant uncertainties regarding the utilization of drilling rigs over their lifecycle. Nevertheless, the incorporation of flexible design is very limited in this industry. Drilling system suppliers must play a key role in introducing flexible systems but have to account for the market by customer dependent acceptability thresholds. This paper introduces a methodology for efficiently and effectively narrowing down the solution space of flexible designs based on a dedicated market segmentation approach.     «

In early phases of system design the offshore drilling industry faces significant uncertainties regarding the utilization of drilling rigs over their lifecycle. Nevertheless, the incorporation of flexible design is very limited in this industry. Drilling system suppliers must play a key role in introducing flexible systems but have to account for the market by customer dependent acceptability thresholds. This paper introduces a methodology for efficiently and effectively narrowing down the solut...     »