On technology-assisted energy saving: challenges of digital plumbing in industrial settings

Revisiting the Digital Plumber: Modifying the Installation Process of an Established Commercial IoT Alarm System

“…This is particularly necessary in cases such as this where the project relates to a fully managed commercial IoT solution to ensure consistency of service. Thus we also build on more recent reports of the digital plumbing role within the professional context (Castelli et al 2022 ) by highlighting further challenges faced by professional digital plumbers within industry settings. In this context we consider the digital plumber as a kind of super-user with facilitating change as a key part of the role.…”

“…Finally, through presenting a practice-oriented study relating to the service based elements of delivering IoT we contribute to the movement towards a holistic view of Industry 4.0 (Ludwig et al 2018 ). In doing so, we extend the view of the digital plumber, building on previous works considering the undertaking of this work by researchers (Tolmie et al 2010 ), householders (Grinter et al 2009 ) and third party engineers (Castelli et al 2022 ), to a professional practice of in-house field engineers as part of an ongoing managed service. As such, we present additional responsibilities relating to the work of digital plumbing as also including work of providing accounts of behaviour relating to infrastructural breakdowns and where change is deemed necessary, partaking in design work to redesign processes and technology solutions.…”

“…In this paper we have presented accounts of a project team addressing and resolving trouble experienced by professional ‘digital plumbers’ (Tolmie et al 2010 ; Castelli et al 2022 ). Our study shows the development of a new installation process that incorporates an RFID tag to be used by the digital plumber to set the channel of the device.…”

“…Thus, there is a need to consider the concept of digital plumbing (Tolmie et al 2010 ) as extending beyond the work of researchers and householders (Grinter et al 2009 ), to also include professional engineers. Castelli et al ( 2022 ) has recently begun to examine the work of professional digital plumbers through ethnographically unpacking the installation work of an IoT based energy management system within a large business. They highlight complexity in stakeholder roles and relations as a key focus for research moving forwards.…”

“…Building on the work of Bowker ( 1994 ), these papers demonstrate the role of digital plumbing as a core element in establishing IoT systems and as such, highlight a need for systems to support the social order and evolving routines of people installing and maintaining them. More recently, research on the role of digital plumbers has examined the installation of IoT solutions into the industrial setting of a production company (Castelli et al 2022 ). In line with much of the work in this area, this study focused on the initial installation of a system and highlighted challenges relating to coordination of multiple parties and job roles within the installation work of an energy management solution in a large business.…”