Enterprise Quality Management Challenges In The Oil And Gas Industry

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The best practises and management systems involved in quality management have remained rather consistent over the decades, but the systems and solutions used to monitor and ensure the production and delivery of high-quality products have been re-invented over and over again, resulting in dramatic change.

For the oil and gas industry, however, where standards are heavily regulated, such innovations mean very little and are hardly implemented. This is just one of the quality management challenges facing the O&G industry.

The challenge with quality management in the O&G sector

There is an increasing need for companies to focus on things like compliance with regulations to ensure health, safety, and environmental stewardship, but O&G companies continue to lag behind in the use of technologies that would make management easier.

Oil and gas suppliers form a critical part of the industry and, therefore, face heavy scrutiny. This is reasonable considering that their failure to deliver quality products would result in adverse environmental impact. It is this very reason that the American Petroleum Institute came up with standards for quality and safety.

Although the midstream and downstream areas of the O&G chain can be easily managed by conventional quality management systems, there is still a deficit of EQMS (enterprise quality management software) for managing the entire process. Using EQMS would be the best tool to facilitate organizational excellence.

How to integrate quality and compliance into O&G

A recent survey revealed that the O&G industry is largely influenced by supply versus demand economics. And while price and supply are critical, compliance and quality also play a major role in the global value chain. There are three components to that value chain:

• Upstream – includes exploration activities such as surveying, mapping, and data processing
• Midstream – includes the processing, storage, and transportation of crude oil and gas under logistics, compliance and process control
• Downstream – includes refining and delivery of oil and gas to businesses and consumers

Things such as operational excellence and its varied enablers, including EQMS, are critical for stakeholder demands and for securing a competitive advantage. The same report recommends that O&G suppliers make use of EQMS to increase quality control and streamline efforts.

EQMS can also be used for other purposes, such as using reports and analytics to increase insight into major processes, and identifying what works and what doesn’t.

Final note

The best way for the oil and gas industry to advance is by going beyond compliance requirements and establishing holistic solutions that act as centres for a fragmented value chain landscape.