Continuos improvement based on cost of quality and lessons learned in an EPC project of an Oil & Gas industry

Abstract

Continuous improvement is a competitive tool in any industry, but especially nowadays among Oil & Gas Industries, where profitable margins are year after year decreasing. For this purpose the best continuous improvement partner are the cost of quality, which shows to the analyst where to focus his effort in the most profitable way for his company. The third systematic which complements perfectly cost of quality and continuous improvement is lessons learned, which creates the best fields for the development of continuous improvement. This thesis explains how to combine these different but always related techniques for controlling and improving the performance of a services Oil & Gas industry at EPC level. Based on a Case Study of General Electric Oil & Gas Sandvika (Norway) applied on its Quality Assurance Department, in which Cost of Quality and Lessons Learned have not been already implemented, although the company is operating in Oil & Gas industry since more than six years, the reader will discover how a continuous improvement model is specifically designed in a very practical and simple way, based on a logical cost of quality system, standardized thanks to a lessons learned implementation, in the most common type of big project for this industry, “Engineering, Procurement and Construction”. Despite of the incomplete initial implementation of these methodologies, the accurate analysis, identification of the opportunities and the best resources, ends up with a very effective continuous improvement model designed and showed in this document.