Meeting the oil and gas challenge head on with resource planning

The oil and gas industry and the supply chain that drives the industry make a huge contribution to the UK economy, boosting treasury income each year by £ 40 billion, while the supply chain has contributed another £ 7 billion from the export of goods and services. The industry currently employees approximately 450 000 people and according to the Oil & Gas UK 2013 Economic Report, the UK Continental Shelf has the potential to satisfy close to 50% of the UK’s oil and gas demand in 2020 if the current rate of investment is sustained.

However, oil and gas companies are also being forced to adapt to rising costs, anticipate and prepare for future growth and respond to growing global energy demand. While the potential is there, businesses must remain agile and efficient in order to be more profitable in this competitive landscape.

Having the right products, equipment and people in place at the right time is vital. If a business is project based it needs to look at resource balancing across multiple industries and reporting on earned value and the cost to complete across projects, geographies, customers and entities. Effective management is critical and requires better back office planning more than on site adjustments.

For manufacturing led organisations it is imperative to get products to market faster than the competition while maintaining the highest quality and reliability. If core products are rental it needs to understood where these assets are, when they are on or off hire and when they can be allocated to the next job. For asset management maintenance schedules, resource allocation, SLAs and performance benchmarks are critical elements against which all is measured.

The oil and gas industry is complex, with a host of operational functions needed to support individual elements. Companies can not allow functions to run independently without communication with each other, suppliers or customers.

The free flow of information through these complex businesses is critical for ensuring effective utilisation of resources. A study on ERP adoption and effectiveness found oil and gas companies using ERP solutions are seeing measurable improvements in profitability of up to 10% and productivity gains up to 4.3%. These companies were also able to better identify shifts in demands and therefore adjust production schedules to improve capacity and efficiency.

It is critical for the survival and growth of operators in the industry they have real time visibility of critical business information in order to remain agile, efficient and productive. The industry is changing but ERP can keep companies ahead of the game.

HSO’s unique ERP solution and delivery methodology has been specially designed to enable energy, oil and gas organisations to increase profitability with up to date line of business systems. Energy, oil, and gas companies also need to be able to address today’s increasing level of competition as well as the complexity of new product and service offerings available. To do this requires a flexible, agile and scalable ERP infrastructure platform.

Written by Gavin Oberholzer, HSO.

Edited by Claira Lloyd

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/01082014/hso-asset-management-and-challenges/