Improv­ing the exe­cu­tion effi­cien­cy in main­te­nance and sup­ply chain man­age­ment for oil and gas

Back­ground

Main­te­nance and sup­ply chain man­age­ment are cru­cial in the oil and gas indus­try. Main­te­nance ensures equip­ment reli­a­bil­i­ty, safe­ty, and cost sav­ings through reg­u­lar inspec­tions, repairs, and pre­ven­tive mea­sures. It opti­mis­es asset per­for­mance, reduces down­time, and min­imis­es envi­ron­men­tal risks.

Sup­ply chain man­age­ment facil­i­tates time­ly pro­cure­ment, inven­to­ry man­age­ment, logis­tics, and strong sup­pli­er rela­tion­ships. It ensures the avail­abil­i­ty of nec­es­sary mate­ri­als, min­imis­es dis­rup­tions, and sup­ports cost optimization.

Both main­te­nance and sup­ply chain man­age­ment con­tribute to max­i­miz­ing pro­duc­tion, min­i­miz­ing down­time, and ensur­ing safe and prof­itable oper­a­tions in the oil and gas industry.

Our client is one of the world’s lead­ing oil and gas com­pa­nies. They are ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grat­ed and oper­ate in all areas of the oil and gas indus­try, includ­ing upstream, refin­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and mar­ket­ing, petro­chem­i­cals, pow­er gen­er­a­tion, and trading.

The client has a glob­al pres­ence, either oper­at­ing on their own or as part of joint ven­tures in mul­ti­ple countries.

Analy­sis

The client has an affil­i­ate in Trinidad & Toba­go that explores, pro­duces, and dis­trib­utes oil and gas in the region. We con­duct­ed a five-week analy­sis to eval­u­ate two issues:

1. How the affil­i­ate had imple­ment­ed five cor­po­rate core work­flows:
   ✔ Work Man­age­ment Sys­tem (WMS)
   ✔ Activ­i­ty Inte­gra­tion (AI)
   ✔ Con­trol of Work (CoW)
   ✔ Pur­chase to Pay
   ✔ Mate­r­i­al Management
2. Eval­u­at­ing the col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Oper­a­tions and Pro­cure­ments and Sup­ply Chain Man­age­ment (PSCM) divi­sions to ensure that work is exe­cut­ed safe­ly and effi­cient­ly on site, with the right resources and the right materials.

Our analy­sis high­light­ed a few areas of concern:

1. Core work­flows some­times caused con­fu­sion, espe­cial­ly regard­ing the touch­points and roles.
2. Con­fu­sion and lack of under­stand­ing seemed to pro­vide con­ve­nient excus­es for not apply­ing rig­or and skip­ping many basics.
3. There was no struc­tured and con­sis­tent PDCA cycle, dai­ly review of work was not con­sis­tent­ly prac­ticed, vari­ances were not reviewed, and there was no RCA at site level.
4. Meet­ing effec­tive­ness and atten­dance of required per­son­nel was gen­er­al­ly poor. Del­e­gates were often sent but did not have the abil­i­ty to take decisions.
5. Tech­ni­cians were under­utilised; light exe­cu­tion sched­ules com­bined with inflat­ed planned hours in MOs led to over­all low wrench time.

Project Approach

Based on the results of our analy­sis, we began a 45-week trans­for­ma­tion project to help the client its organ­i­sa­tion­al work­flows by pos­i­tive­ly influ­enc­ing behav­iours, process­es, and systems.

We began by set­ting up a man­age­ment action team (MAT) who were spe­cial­ly select­ed from the region­al tal­ent pool. These includ­ed lead­ers and sub­ject mat­ter experts and mon­i­tored by our consultants.

The MAT was set up to dri­ve required improve­ments in the par­tic­u­lar work­streams, and the over­all project was over­seen by a gov­er­nance board com­prised of the region­al lead­er­ship team and head­ed by the clien­t’s VP of Operations.

Project Imple­men­ta­tion

Active col­lab­o­ra­tion by the affiliate’s stake­hold­ers ensured the devel­op­ment of opti­mum solu­tions and buy-in of the improve­ments. The solu­tions were pre­sent­ed and agreed by all stake­hold­ers in the Strate­gic Inte­gra­tion Meet­ing (SIM) held mid­way through the project.

The imple­men­ta­tion of improve­ments for AI, WMS and CoW was sequenced. We iden­ti­fied sev­er­al major hubs and a small­er onshore site for the first roll­outs, fol­lowed by the small­er off­shore plat­forms and larg­er onshore location.

We also con­tin­u­ous­ly coached the work­force on the new solu­tions and process­es. Progress was mon­i­tored through a com­bi­na­tion of the Meet­ing Matu­ri­ty Eval­u­a­tion Sys­tem (MES) and the KPI dashboard.

These tools formed the basis for decision-making; con­cerns were swift­ly addressed through the MAT or Gov­er­nance Board when required. These tools were hand­ed over to the client as part of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty process to ensure that the improve­ments will con­tin­ue to yield fur­ther value.

Key Results