An important amount of the projects we work on, have their genesis in the need of reaching an operational model in which different departments or areas work in a coordinated way. The increasing specialization and centralization of functions requires a high degree of coordination among them to develop business tasks.

A traditional example is the process of Integrated Business Planning in which the commercial area builds a sales forecast that then defines the dimensions for procurement, production / operations, and logistics. From this planning process, you can have different and changing environments. A delay in the delivery of materials may generate an unbalanced production output causing the need to prioritize deliveries to clients. Because of this, the sales department may fail to comply with a particular contract agreement. These unbalances could be a result of different causes: a new operating margin target of a product, a change in sales forecast and production plan, problems in production caused by corrective maintenance, problems with stocking, a change in objectives, or a low meeting of sales targets.

An evolution of the concept of integrated planning is the Integrated Planning and Scheduling. In industries, such as in Oil&Gas, the centralization of the planning is key to optimize the working plans where various areas are involved. In this way, that centralized vision allows to prioritize activities to maximize results and optimize resources. In companies such as Repsol, the Exploration and Production area bets strongly on integrated planning and scheduling, centralizing it in the Integrated Operations Centers (IOCs). After all working processes and responsibilities for the integrated planning and scheduling have been deployed, LIVE from Visavi has been implemented as the technological solution that enables the integration of plans for adjustment and optimization.

“In these remote and complex environments, the coordination of activities between areas has a vital role in our daily operations. Our team is continuously seeking for the most efficient resource utilization to secure an optimal asset operation while being aligned to safety and environmental standards.” LIVE is a key tool used to support the flow of work from planning and scheduling. This facilitates the integration and visualization of information for optimization.” Pablo Velasquez, Production Operations Manager (IOC lead) at Repsol Block-57 asset in Peru

At Alfa Consulting, we help our clients implement integrated operations planning by defining processes and responsibilities. We then give support in the most recent solutions that enables the integration. In our case, we bet on Visavi LIVE as the technical solution which offers the most graphic way to present and optimize multiple activities that are performed in complex industrial environments. The solution integrates the tasks to perform in different localizations, facilitating information from the working orders in the Computerized Maintenance Management Software and the project plans that sum additional activities to execute on the asset. The integrated vision of all the activities allows us to identify bottlenecks such as the ones produced by the availability of transportation to remote locations that rely on ships and helicopters. Overall, it allows us to visualize all of the operations in one place, facilitating the identification of potential improvements and risks in the plans. Ultimately, we optimize the resources and their results.

“We had an important challenge in the integrated planning and scheduling of our activities in the field. We have seen the need to clearly define our working processes, roles, and responsibilities from the beginning while in parallel, looked for the technological solution that would make the most efficient process. That is how, today, we can say that we have done it successfully in our assets operated in the 57 Block in Perú and in Marcellus in the USA. We are on the way to achieve it soon in our other assets in Canada, Bolivia, and Norway. The change management has been key for us to reach our targets because we adopted a new way of working with the people that are part of the different teams that coordinate this process.” Itziar Martinez, Integrated Operations Centers Program Owner

Integrated planning is a clear example that gives a solution for today’s increasing need to have a management system that improves coordination with updated and integrated information that shows the same view for all of the organization. With this solution, the opportunities and risks can be effectively identified to enable us to get ahead of them.

Lázaro Hermoso – Manager at Alfa Consulting