Development o f Maintenance Management Excellence Model for GNPOC Pipeline

Abstract

Petroleum companies invest large amount of resources to build and run production and exporting facilities. To make the best use of these facilities along their life span, it is essential to adopt an effective maintenance management systems and practices to get the desired outcome. The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of “Maintenance”, and “Maintenance excellence” as a way of continuous improvement for maintenance management. The specific objective of the study is to explain how to get sustain maintenance performance improvement by using a maintenance excellence model. The study is conducted as “a normative case study” in Pipeline division of GNPOC-Sudan. The data used is from the year 2011 and prior using the Tompkins Excellence Model in year 2011. The research problem is that the company needs to maintain its valuable assets and it should find a way to adopt world best practices in maintenance. What are these best practices? How far the current situation of maintenance from these best practices? What to do to reduce the gap between the current performance and the excellent one? Data collected by using the 18 forms provided by the model as a questionnaire, which cover the 18 sections of best practices according to “Tompkins Excellence Model”, firstly making self-assessment for GNPOC performance, secondly analyzing the data to assess the gap to ideal performance by getting areas for improvement, then using RADAR graph to show targeted sections, and finally using DMAIC as improvement tool for each of the areas for improvement in lower grade sections. The main result is that the company achieved 1045 points out of 2000 points which is 52.3% that means GNOPC pipeline department maintenance level is BELOW AVERAGE.10 out of the 18 sections achieved lower than 60% in their current rating in the scale. The main conclusion is that the future impact if maintenance in GNPOC continued to work in this level, is that plant reliability will decrease, downtime will increase, cost of maintenance will increase, equipment uptime will decrease, and eventually the unit transportation cost will increase leading to decrease in profitability of the business and lowering the financial return on asset investment This study can be used in maintenance sections and departments in public or private sector with some modification in criteria to suit organization activities. KEYWORDS: Maintenance, Maintenance Excellence, Maintenance Performance Measurements, Maintenance Excellence Model, Maintenance Improvement.