Q: OEE in Oil and Gas: Can OEE be used or adapted for use in the oil and gas industry? Are there any concrete examples of how the metric can be used successfully, either off or on-shore?

Arno Koch • OEE can be used on ANY type of equipment for (industrial) conversion. So yes, OEE can be used in Oil and Gas industry? Also on drilling well’s, refining crude oil, cracking Nafta, extracting tar sands and other processes where OEE can be measured in Oil and Gas industry.

What to do to measure OEE in Oil and Gas industry:

• Install OEE there where you want to put your focus for improvement activities. There is no use for OEE if you do not use its information to improve it…
• Do not think your equipment is so special it will need special treatment. It is as special as any other machine… If you go through the categories of losses to define as suggested in the OEE Industry Standard, you will notice that all the losses in your processes are mentioned.
• Use the data-collection (no matter how you do it) as a method to involve the people that can influence the effectiveness of the equipment. Make sure they feel ownership, otherwise OEE remains a managements toy and no improvement is to be expected.
• Do not try to be exactly precise. 80% correct will allow you to see what needs to be done, specially in the beginning. So all the sales-talk about how you really need to connect the whole world of computers together… do not take it too serious. Be pragmatic and get your crew involved, ask them what is a best plausible way of getting information about ´running´ and output.
• Just start, even if it is just on a piece of paper. You will be amazed what information you will get, assuming you defined OEE for optimal loss visualization.

See also:

A New Approach to Operational Excellence for Oil and Gas

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