| dc.description.abstract | The oil & gas industry is under immense pressure to stay competitive, bringing out the demand to keep cost at a minimum and quality at a maximum. This determination and current market demand force organizations to continuously evaluate and improve their work processes to stay viable. Organizations manage quality and productivity by breaking it down into fundamental activities from start to finish. Aker Solutions' MMO team has had challenges with the spare part management process in the past and ongoing projects, which outlines the basis and objective for this research paper. This paper aims to evaluate and optimize the existing work process by suggesting improvement measures and increasing output and process quality.
Initially, the existing work process was evaluated by streamlining and mapping out the process. Streamlining- and mapping tools help identify discrepancies in the process and suggest improvement measures to reduce or eliminate existing and futuristic inconsistencies. Streamlining the process was also used to create a flowchart of the existing process; outlining the process in the flowchart allowed to evaluate to have a clear representation of the flow of activities, cycle time, participant roles, and areas of responsibilities. These findings proved to be critical elements used in strategy to optimize the existing work process.
After conducting fundamental analysis, a detailed analysis was performed. The information gathered from the fundamental analysis, discrepancies, control measures, and the value stream was further assessed and discussed. In the detailed analysis, subtasks are mapped and classified into segments describing value-added and non-value-added activities. This information was crucial when creating control measures for the existing process and could also be considered for other spare part management processes used in the future. The suggested measures aim to benefit the process by improving the flow of information and communication, enhancing the work environment, and reducing revisions.
Ongoing projects might not be capable of implementing an entirely new strategy based on existing contracts and agreements. However, activities that are not confined by binding factors should find the proposed work measures helpful. For example, the strategy used to create a new work process was inspired by existing theory on the reengineering work process and proved valuable when streamlining, mapping, analyzing, and implementing a suggested work process for managing spare parts.
Throughout the paper, an emphasis on valuing the work process as much as anyone would value the product is evident. Increasing the overall quality comes from breaking down and optimizing the subtasks. This way, the organization would satisfy the expectations, conditions, and principles valued internally in the organization and externally by customers. | |