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The oil and gas industry is currently operating in a volatile environment of depressed oil prices, alternate feedstock availability, global competitiveness, changing economics, and rising energy costs, etc. Boosting productivity means investing in new innovation and technology, accelerating careers through sophisticated training methods, and empowering personnel to drive operational excellence throughout the organization.
There is a solution. Develop a strategic Continuous Improvement program. You may not call it that; you may call it Six Sigma, Lean Enterprise, DMAIC, Agile Manufacturing, or the combination of two or more methodologies. And, if you happen to be a new employee, you may be tasked with (usually within the first 6-12 months on the job) developing a “new and improved” process/procedure/operation that improves what is currently in place. After it’s completed, like a lot of great ideas, the chances of it getting filed away and forgotten are high. This is unfortunate, because it shouldn’t. Actually executing low-cost, high-reward Continuous Improvement initiatives can save your organization millions — with a payback in mere months.
A recent Schneider Electric survey found that 79% of our SimSci customers intend to implement some form of continuous improvement this year. They will primarily focus on optimizing design, lowering operating expenses, and improving productivity. But when asked how they intend to drive continuous improvement initiatives within their organization, the majority (85%) plan to use software to meet their goals and more than half (58%) will also use training. What’s interesting in these findings is that Six Sigma-related methodology doesn’t even break the top 3.
So, if not Six Sigma, what is Continuous Improvement? Or better yet, how do you scope, develop, and roll-out its initiatives? Continuous Improvement is the pursuit of safe, profitable, and reliable operations by empowering employees to persistently evaluate and improve processes with respect to their efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility. To drive these initiatives, you must first identify the business objectives, opportunity size, and roll-out sites. The next step is to then implement advanced technology to meet the objectives, and finally, report and evaluate the results.
SimSci by Schneider Electric is uniquely qualified to execute continuous improvement solutions by helping clients align and prioritize their business objectives. Our technology can be integrated into your plant to drive advanced process control, performance monitoring, data reconciliation, and optimization. Intelligent visualization is employed to report role-based information in a timely fashion for enhanced decision support. To learn more about Continuous Improvement solutions, click on the banner below to download your free whitepaper.
