OFS companies face a variety of challenges. Despite the rise of oil prices since 2021 and production increases, oil price volatility continues to torment the industry. Competitive pressures are accelerating, driven by customers that continue to demand more value for less money. Supply chain issues have slightly abated, but cost increases continue to squeeze the bottomline. And the attrition of skilled workers adds to an already scarce labor supply. A recent Economic Times article indicated that 50% of the Oil and Gas Industry workforce will reach retirement age within 7 years. Against this backdrop of challenges, one of the best levers for boosting asset utilization in the OFS industry may be that frontline workforce – regardless of the labor market.
Running As Lean As Possible
Cost cutting efforts induced by the drastic reductions in activity and demand during the pandemic have taken OFS companies to the edge of operating capabilities – running as lean as possible. Unfortunately, lean OFS frontlines have few tools, if any, to drive better productivity. These frontline operations are the key to improving asset utilization through shorter turn-around times, better repair efficiency and reducing costs. According to research done by Ernst & Young, 92% of oil and gas executives surveyed say reskilling a lean workforce will be critical to company success going forward
How Digitalizing The Frontline Boosts Asset Utilization
OFS frontline workers are predominantly using paper tickets and checklists which just add to the workload and provide very little visibility to management to assist with improving asset utilization. Digitalizing the frontline can help lean workforces improve productivity and put critical training and safety data at the point of need, to help onboard new employees more quickly and upskill the existing workforce. And transforming that paper into digital data can drive better visibility across operations to empower more productive decision making.
Faster Asset Turnaround
With a digitally enabled frontline, on the spot use of digital workflows with embedded training gets inspections and repairs done more quickly and accurately. Pre job inspections and rig ups can be streamlined, and documents for customers produced automatically. The same is true when equipment is returned, guiding consistent inspection and repair processes that put equipment back into the field faster and allows companies to increase monetization of assets and recovery of repair costs.
Increased Asset Availability
Digital tools enable the easy capture of equipment condition and usage data powering conditional maintenance programs to keep equipment operational and to spot potential issues that can take assets out of service. Digitalized asset inspections and repair also provide critical data for better understanding common sources of equipment downtime, and for enabling operations to optimize parts and manpower to ensure equipment availability.
More Effective Asset Management
Instant visibility to asset inventory and availability helps OFS companies both meet demand more effectively, and to better manage costs by moving assets to where they are needed. This also applies to parts, which can reduce costly duplication of supplies and, along with assets, lowers overall inventory carrying costs.
Transforming The Frontline For Better Asset Utilization
Digital technologies are transforming every part of the oil and gas industry, yet for OFS companies their frontline processes are still dominated by paper forms and checklists. Digitalizing frontline processes and empowering frontline workers with a digital platform can improve productivity for lean workforces, shorten cycle times for equipment repair and job setup, and deliver data that OFS companies need to improve asset utilization and company operational efficiency. Learn more about OFS Frontline Digital Automation and how OFS companies like EnerCorp are transforming their frontline operations at ROO.AI.
Stephen Zocchi is CMO at ROO.AI. After building software to help salespeople quickly and easily price and configure complex equipment, he joined ROO.AI to create a new mobile platform to guide and assist frontline workers in Oil & Gas and MTO Manufacturing.
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