How Management Keeps Abreast of New Technology
Authors: Lund Gage 
Published: December 2007

In large measure, oil owes its predominant position in the energy business to the imagination and ingenuity, of its research and technological personnel. It follows that if oil is to maintain and enhance its position of leadership, it must continue to predominate also in the development of ever-improving technology. Concurrently, it becomes essential to evolve techniques for communicating and applying new industry technology while it is still fresh and ahead of the competition, and therefore profitable. A prime objective of oil industry, managements, therefore, should be to accummulate, appraise and disseminate new technology to their personnel, in time to derive whatever economic advantage may be available from having such knowledge as quickly as, or sooner than, other competitors in the energy market. This article describes the procedure Standard of California employs to achieve this objective.

Introduction

The American petroleum industry as we know it today, tremendous in scope and potential, is a product of rapidly increasing energy demand and technological progress. One could not have occurred without the other-without the greater demand there could not have been the incentive to seek out better, more economic and efficient products and processes. But without the technological developments that have occurred, petroleum could not have captured the dominant position which it has achieved as a supplier of energy requirements. Some other energy source undoubtedly would have stepped in to do the job. In large measure, oil owes its predominant position in the energy business to the imagination and ingenuity of its research and technological personnel. It follows that if the oil industry is to maintain and enhance that position of leadership, it must continue to predominate also in the development of ever-improving technology. Concurrent with such development, it becomes essential as well to evolve techniques for applying new industry technology while it is still fresh and ahead of the competition, and therefore profitable. The objective of this paper, then, is to describe how we at Standard of California communicate new technology to our personnel, hopefully in time to derive whatever economic advantage may be available from having such knowledge as quickly as or sooner than other competitors in the energy market. Management, for the purposes of this discussion, means anyone who has a responsibility for making decisions requiring technical knowledge. In a modern oil company, that includes virtually everyone from chairman of the board through to drilling superintendent. The prime objective of our company's system is to supply new technical data to anyone who can possibly make profitable use of it.

While there are hundreds of ways to approach the problem of keeping management abreast of new technology, most will fit into two basic categories:1. The mechanics of fact-gathering and analysis-how to assign the personnel and establish the systematic procedures so that technical advances will be carefully and thoroughly monitored and appraised.2. Communications-how to establish methods and procedures through which technical information can be disseminated regularly and quickly to the management people who need to know what's going on. The twofold objective is to find out what is happening, and to report it to the right people soon enough for the information to be of value. Additionally, means must be found to encourage management people who are heavily burdened with administrative responsibilities, most of them many years out of school, to keep up their interest in technical advances, and to be alert to new technical applications which can save or make more money for their company.

Professional and Technical Societies

Initially, it is to be hoped that people in responsible management positions would maintain their technical proficiency through their own efforts. As a matter of fact, many do, in varying degrees, through outside reading and through participation in professional societies. As members are aware, professional groups have been one of our industry's most important sources of new technological information for many years. At Standard, employees are encouraged to take such positions not only at the national level, but also in the local sections and committees of the various professional societies. That includes not only top managers but all technical personnel who hold responsible assignments in the company.

JPT

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