LNG Benchmarking Gap Closure Workshop
Workshop facilitators: Jannes Regterschot & Rene Verburg
Benchmarking is an important methodology to set the base line performance of an LNG export facility. A benchmarking review establishes how well the facility performs in terms of production, safety performance, availability, operating cost, maintenance execution, energy efficiency etc. and highlights the gaps with the wider industry performance. For many operations it is difficult to translate the gained performance insights into an action plan that will form the backbone for performance improvements. They either lack the focus, time or coordination to produce a prioritized and coherent plan. This Petrogenium workshop is designed to facilitate the framing process after a benchmarking exercise was completed and reported. In the various successive stages of the workshop, we first aim to have everyone accept the outcome/conclusions from the benchmarking review. We then help to extract the performance gaps that need prime attention for follow-up and apply a model to get to grips with the underperformance item and derive performance improvement actions.
Participants
Petrogenium strives to have a broad representation of knowledgeable staff taking part in the gap closure review workshop. This should include management positions to demonstrate commitment and to assist with the provision of higher-level insights to the workshop. But equally important it is to have the various experts and operational staff around as they can provide in-depth insights in the performance of the facility and the organization. This will also ensure that certain events and decisions will be viewed in a realistic context and help participants to agree on actions needed to improve. Petrogenium’s facilitation ensures that the right discussions take place and that a constructive way forward is determined and documented.
Learning Objectives
- A joint and consistent understanding of the performance of the facility and the gaps with operations elsewhere.
- Agreeing a prioritization of the key performance gaps that will be further analysed for performance improvement. The choice shall be underwritten by the potential for margin improvement or cost reduction, or the strategic importance of the item.
- Have course participants work in small groups, create an understanding of the underperformance, and come up with specific actions to close the performance gap.
- Provide a coherent set of prioritized improvement actions against an agreed timeline. The totality of actions over time will be visualized as an improvement roadmap.
- Obtain full understanding and acceptance of the gap closure actions in a presentation to management where each work group presents its views and recommended way forward.
Key Success Factor
The contents and coverage of the workshop are flexible and can be fine-tuned to customer needs. For a successful preparation and workshop, it is essential to have access to an experienced focal point in the client organisation. The focal point should help to get access to all relevant data and key members of staff. Furthermore, he/she should provide guidance on ways of working, insight in the organisation and information on other improvement initiatives.Programme
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
- Scrutiny of the benchmarking report findings and gaining full acceptance for its conclusions.
- Ranking of the various gaps with input from management and selection of the 3 most important performance items to be analysed in more detail.
Day 2
- Work in parallel groups to analyse the underperformance
- As a team facilitated by Petrogenium staff, formulate and prioritise the necessary actions to help close the performance gaps.
- Create an action plan and implementation schedule and prepare a set of slides to present to management.
Day 3
- Working groups to present their results to the other groups and receive comments and suggestions for improvement.
- Working groups to further improve their plans and update presentations.
- Petrogenium and working group presentation to management of the work done and the gap closure plans developed.