What NDT challenges DIMATE PACS in Oil & Gas really fixes – based on the feedback of our clients

“Which concrete challenges does DIMATE PACS actually solve in your day-to-day work?”

Instead of starting with features, architecture or buzzwords, we deliberately started with their experience: the things that go wrong, the everyday frustrations in the workflow, the risks that keep people awake at night. That produced a surprisingly consistent picture of recurring pain points in the way organizations handle NDT inspection data.

This article summarizes those insights in the users’ own language. No feature list – but a set of recognizable situations, supported by anonymized quotes. Our goal was not “to sell a DIMATE tool”, but to make visible which structural issues exist around NDT data, and what kind of capabilities are needed to address them.

1. The “black box” NDT workflow: nobody really knows where the inspection is

In many organizations, the inspection workflow feels like a black box. There are work orders, field crews and test devices, evaluations, reports. But everything in between is opaque.

One integrity manager put it bluntly:

“We never truly know where an inspection stands. Is it stuck in the field, under analysis, or waiting for IDMS entry?”

If you unpack that, one critical structural issue stands out: lack of visibility across the chain.
Integrity and asset management teams can’t track the status of an NDT inspection order, whether it’s completed, evaluated, pending, or if a report has been created.

DIMATE PACS eliminates this blind spot. It supports and controls the entire inspection process, from commissioning the service contractors to evaluating and returning the digital inspection results. It transforms the black box into a traceable workflow: commissioning, test data generation, evaluation, test report creation and approval, measurement value transfer to IDMS – each step is assigned a status, a time stamp, and a responsible person. The aim is not so much to “add another tool” as to create process awareness: Who does what, when, and with which data?

“The biggest difference? I don’t have to guess anymore. I can actually look up where an inspection really is.”

2. The thumbnail challenge: making Million dollar decisions based on tiny images

Many asset decisions are still being made based on small pictures – quite literally.

An inspection engineer described it like this:

“I am making million-dollar repair decisions based on a tiny, grainy report photo because I can’t access the original high-res scan.”

Behind that quote lies a familiar pattern:

• Reports often contain compressed thumbnails of radiographic or ultrasonic images
• The original high-resolution files are scattered: on USB sticks, local drives, ageing laptops or at contractors
• During audits or re-evaluations, teams discover that the original data is missing, corrupted or not clearly linked to the correct asset

From a data-quality perspective, this is essential: Without access to source data, every interpretation is fragile.

A DIMATE PACS environment addresses this by providing:

• Central, long-term storage of original images and raw data (RT, CT, UT, VT)
• Versioning and metadata
• And a clear link to the asset structure, down to CML level where needed

That doesn’t just improve documentation. It changes the conversation in meetings: people stop arguing over blurry screenshots and start exploring actual images.

“For the first time I can open the real image during a review instead of only a PDF thumbnail. It completely changes the discussion.”

3. The data-entry backlog: manual typing as a structural risk

Ask any inspection or integrity team and they’ll recognize this scene: a spreadsheet or report with a large number of thickness readings, and someone tasked with manually entering them into the IDMS.

One inspection manager described it like this:

“Manually typing thickness measurements into our IDMS is a massive bottleneck that creates a dangerous gap in our decision-making.”

This isn’t just inefficient; it’s risky:

• Time lag between measurement and decision
  The longer data sits outside the system, the longer assets run with unknown or outdated information.
• Human error
  One shifted row, one misplaced decimal point or one wrongly copied value can make a corrosion trend look much better – or much worse – than reality.
• Fragmented data landscape
  Some values live in the report, some in the IDMS, others remain with the contractor, and still others are in a spreadsheet or email attachments. It is difficult to maintain a complete overview.

Seen through a best practice lens, this is a classic single source of truth issue. Ideally, inspection data is:

1. Captured digitally at the source
2. Automatically propagated into the systems where decisions are made.

DIMATE PACS plays a central role here by accepting digital input from devices and apps, and supporting automated export into IDMS or AIM. It shifts the role of people from “data typist” to “data validator”.

Or, as one user put it:

“We didn’t just save time. More importantly, we actually trust the numbers we are seeing now.”

4. The identity crisis: “are we even looking at the right component or equipment?”

A surprisingly frequent problem is much more basic: people are simply not sure whether a report belongs to the right asset.

An integrity engineer captured that anxiety in one sentence:

“A single typo in a report makes me think I’m looking at the wrong component, creating total confusion - or worse - a false sense of security.”

This happens when:

• Critical identifiers (tag numbers, component IDs, CMLs) live in free text fields
• There is no strict link between inspections and the official asset hierarchy (from IDMS, AIM or ERP)
• Different contractors and sites use different naming conventions

From a process standpoint, two principles help:

1. Let systems, not humans, handle critical ID matching.
   Use synchronized asset lists, structured picklists or direct order-to-inspection links instead of free typing.
2. Use the same asset language everywhere. Systems should speak the same hierarchy and tags.

5. The integrity gap: archives that slowly fall apart

On top of digital chaos, many organizations still depend on physical film, DVDs and loose external drives. That’s not just inconvenient, it is a direct risk to compliance and institutional knowledge.

One manager phrased it like this:

“Our physical films are degrading in storage, and our digital files are scattered across unsecured USBs and local hard drives.”

This brings several issues together:

• Physical degradation
  NDT films don’t last forever. Temperature, humidity and handling all take their toll.
• Security and privacy risks
  USB sticks and local hard disks rarely fall under serious security or backup policies.
• Audit and liability problems
  When you can’t prove what was inspected, what was observed and what was decided, it becomes difficult to defend integrity decisions years later.

A useful way to look at this is Total Cost of Data Ownership. It’s not just about storage costs; it’s about everything needed to keep data safe, usable and findable across the lifetime of an asset.

A DIMATE PACS platform adds value here by providing:

• Centralized, secured storage
• Proper backup and redundancy
• And audit trails that record who did what, when, with which files

One of our clients described the impact after migration:

“Once we had everything in one place, we realized how dependent we’d been on boxes in basements and drives in desk drawers.”

6. What DIMATE PACS is – and what it is not

Based on these user stories, it is clearer to define DIMATE PACS functionally rather than technically.

From their perspective, a DIMATE PACS platform is:

• A centralized digital library for all relevant NDT inspection images and measurement data
• A workflow backbone that supports the journey from field operator to integrity decision
• A connector to existing IDMS, AIMS or ERP systems rather than a replacement
• And a foundation for AI and analytics, because data finally becomes consistent, traceable and complete

Equally important is what a PACS is not:

• It does not replace the inspection’s judgement.
• It does not automatically “fix integrity”.
• DIMATE PACS is not just another IT add-on. It’s a strategic foundation for how your organization will manage NDT data in a sustainable future proof way.

As one IT project manager framed it nicely:

“In stead of treating this as “another IT project”, we decided to take full control of our inspection data. And DIMATE PACS has proven to be a strategic platform.“

7. Business impact: time, uptime and accountability

The challenges above feel operational, but the impact is business-level. In conversations with users, three themes repeatedly surface:

1. Time to return-to-service
   Reducing the time from “start inspection” to “confident restart” during turnarounds and outages.
2. Unplanned downtime and risk
   Using better and faster insight to catch issues before they force emergency shutdowns.
3. Compliance and audit readiness
   Being able to demonstrate, years later, exactly what was inspected, what was seen and what was decided.

One Integrity Manager summed up the effect in simple terms:

“The biggest change isn’t one particular feature. It’s that inspection information now feels like a reliable flow instead of loose sand.”

Seen this way, DIMATE PACS and inspection-data digitalization are not purely “IT projects”, but risk and decision-making projects. They change how quickly and confidently organizations can act on integrity information.

Where to start if these problems sound familiar

For organizations that recognize themselves in these quotes, a few practical starting points emerge from user experience:

1. Map your current data journey
   Draw the path from “measurement in the field” to “decision in the boardroom”. Mark where files are copied, emailed or manually re-entered.
2. Identify your most painful gaps
   Is your biggest problem the black box? The thumbnail culture? The data-entry backlog? The asset identity chaos? The physical archives? Pick one or two to tackle first.
3. Think in workflows, not file shares
   The key question is not “where do we store files?”, but “how do we ensure that the right data reaches the right role at the right time in a controlled way?”.
4. Design for integration, not replacement
   A PACS solution should plug into your existing IDMS, AIMS and ERP landscape and make it stronger – not attempt to replace everything.

“We started small – one site, one inspection method. But once people saw the black box opening up, other sites wanted in almost immediately.”

The real experts on what DIMATE PACS fixes are not our developers or our sales team, but the people who wrestle with NDT data every day. Their stories show that the core value of DIMATE PACS lies not in any single function, but in changing how organizations treat inspection data altogether: from scattered artifacts to a reliable, living foundation for integrity decisions.