Effect of applying lean maintenance in oil and gas fields

Abstract

Oil and Gas Sector are facing a huge increase and delay in Operations & Maintenance tasks for all facilities beside continuous demand from management to improve the productivity of wells and the efficiency of facilities. The top management decides to use Lean Maintenance as a new tool, technique and methodology to improve and modify the current operations, production and maintenance systems as done before by many researchers in the oil and gas sector. This improvement will be done through three real case studies by integrating Building Information Modelling with lean concepts, monitoring Key Performance Indicators within a modern Computerized Maintenance Management Software and finally using some LM tools such as Total Productive Maintenance, Value Stream Mapping and 5S Methodology to increase productivity, efficiency, and quality of the output production and services. The results of implementation since July 2017 till June 2018 show average increase in crude oil production by 6.72% per day in addition to overcome natural decline of oil wells, reduced Technician’s total Preventive Maintenance tasks by 52.63% and transfer the less difficult inspections to Operator to be responsible for making checks to all parameters of all equipment and to enable Technicians to perform other maintenance tasks, Saving about $724,770 in Water Injection Pumps Operation’s Expense. Last but not least, accelerate the workflow of production and maintenance processes by 28% compared with the previous financial year.