Improving the Efficiency of Frequent Team Meetings and Engagements at Petroleum Development of Oman (PDO), the Power of Visual Management Approach
Authors: Al Shukaili Aisha , Al Bahri Lubna , Ram Nayakam , Tai Kin , Al Busaidi Maram , Dughaishi Hilal , Zaabi Yousuf 
Published: March 2023

Objectives/Scope

PDO is a massive organization with more than 500 teams and 9000 staff working in different areas and responsible for hydrocarbon production with many associated challenges. To keep track of their processes' performance and predict or react to any challenge, all teams conduct frequent engagements depending on the nature of their processes. Those engagements typically take longer than the planned time with low efficiency in terms of practical actions. Hence, PDO realized the need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of traditional team engagements; thus, Visual management (VM) was introduced as part of the new way of working.

Methods, Procedures and Processes

VM methodology was introduced by the PDO's continuous improvement (CI) function to the different teams as part of CI fundamentals Deployment. The approach is to develop an effective Visual Management (VM) dashboard and agree with all team members on the frequency of the huddles around the VM dashboards. Developing VM starts with identifying critical processes for each team utilizing specific criteria. Then all critical process is standardized and then visualized in the VM dashboard.

A VM technique developed for the teams is called the: "One, three- and ten- seconds" template approach. Where one second means that in one second, the team can tell if they are on or off track; in three seconds, it can give information about the trends of each KPI; and in ten seconds, the team can see if any actions were agreed upon to overcome any gap. During the VM huddles, any identified gap is captured in the 3 Cs (concern, cause and countermeasures) section.

This VM standard was accompanied by a lean managers program, where each team leader or supervisor is trained to develop an effective VM for their team process and how to coach them to develop the team's VM dashboard.

Results, Observation and Conclusion

Implementing VM dashboards and conducting frequent huddles in around 70% of the teams in PDO has significantly improved the effectiveness of the team engagements.

The efficiency of the team engagements has improved by more than 70% as less time is needed to discuss all the team’s key process. In addition, the effectiveness has increases as well by increasing the quality of the outcome of theses huddles in terms of improving the closure rates of the generated actions, assured benefits realization from these actions and improved reflection rate of these engagements.

As an outcome, in 2021, more than 250 CI projects completed and around 8500 CI ideas were raised and implemented. this resulted in time liberation of around 80 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) and 150 mln USD of cost savings and avoidance

Novel/Additive Information

Implementing standard VM across the organization have significantly increase the identification of the areas of focus for each team and has caught attention to the value creation discussion. Furthermore, this approach has become a new way of working and helped to change the culture and mindset of the teams.

VM has becomes the preferred methodology to have effective meetings.

The innovative part of this approach is having a new way of working and interaction with metrics and figures which prompts effective actions.