US OIL and gas services giant Schlumberger has taken a lean leaf out of the Toyota book after pressure to make better use of space at its Dyce base.
After a year of planning and multimillion-pound investment, the firm has restructured its North Sea drilling and measurement base in Kirkton Avenue into so-called lean operations – the “relentless pursuit of waste elimination” coined by car manufacturing giant Toyota.
Tool processing, the turnaround from coming back from a rig to being ready to go out again, for mostly directional drilling and logging while drilling tools, is being reduced from weeks to 10 days at the base, which services the UK North Sea, offshore Holland and Denmark and Greenland.
Andy Hendricks, Houston-based president of drilling and measurements for Schlumberger, said, on a visit to the Aberdeen base, the investment showed its commitment to the North Sea.
“Technically it has always been a leader,” he said. “In the environment of the North Sea it has to be. It has also been producing a long time and it is going to need advanced technology to keep that going. The key is to be more efficient.”
That means having tools ready to go out and growing throughput but also being able to add more tools and technology to the base, which is constrained by physical limits.
The unit was set up in the 1970s, when it dealt with just a couple of tools, but has grown to supplying up to 20 different types of tools for an average of 10 to 18 offshore rigs in its sector as needs and complexity has increased in the North Sea.
But the organic growth had meant a certain amount of “silo working”, job duplication and tools left being unprocessed if not immediately needed, said Ian Tribe, account manager, drilling and measurements.
“What we realised over the last three years was this was a very inefficient way of working,” he said.
“We have moved to a completely different way of working.
“It means we can get tools repaired and safe and back out to rigs in a much more efficient manner and we are touching and handling the equipment less.”
The base employs about 250 people, having grown last year after Schlumberger bought Smith International, which included significant footprint in Aberdeen.