Oil Equipment Replacement

Six days were removed from the original project duration.

Case Studies

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Business Issue

An oil producer was in need of a major capital equipment replacement, which would have caused a costly extension to the duration of a planned maintenance turnaround. The total time for the turnaround needed to be re-planned and the execution managed to ensure the turnaround completed within the budgeted time.

Approach Used

The Flow Consulting team addressed the problem in three phases:

• Using Lean techniques, the entire project plan was re-planned to allow continuous work on the critical path, and optimized parallel processing for all other non-critical activities.

• Execution of the Turnaround was tightly managed using a best practice approach to active project management.

  • High frequency, short interval reviews with monitored actions kept all key personnel aligned for activity coordination and game plan changes. These reviews used Lean Standard Work to ensure the quality of the deliverable.

  • Additional Lean tools used included;

    • A “two-bin” kanban style approach to control materials in the work area,

    • Constant parallel path management to keep non-critical activities from entering the critical path,

    • Plan/do/check/act logical approaches to problem resolution

    • Visual management of activities, work sequence, and work areas.

• After Action Review – to capture lessons learned and integrate them into forward planning for future major events.

Results

Planning – Six days were removed from the original project duration.

• Execution – The critical path activities suffered only one day of total lost time (largely due to weather). This averted nearly $50M in total revenue impact.

• The turnaround project management process was recognized as a best practice, and is readily deployable to other similar kinds of efforts.

• Lessons Learned – Improvements in future planning activities, combined with improved techniques to managing continuous flow of work on the critical path, has the potential to save millions of dollars in future events.