A Management System Approach to Operational Excellence in the Energy Industry

Book excerpt: "Chevron, an international integrated energy corporation, has installed the Operational Excellence Management System (OEMS) to achieve world-class performance in environmental, health, safety, efficiency, and reliability concerns. This management system is fully described in this research. It shares many attributes with the international standard for environmental management systems known as ISO 14001, although the OEMS is designed to include concerns in safety, health, efficiency, and reliability, in addition to environmental issues. This research investigates the comparability of the OEMS to the international standard. Through direct comparison of requirements of the standard to features of the OEMS it is determined that the OEMS compares favorably with most requirements of the standard. A few areas are identified where improvements to the system would clarify alignment with the standard. Several Chevron business units have had experience with deploying the ISO 14001 system and the OEMS. Leaders in these businesses were interviewed to assess their opinions of the comparability of the systems. In general, each leader felt the OEMS was quite comparable to the ISO 14001 standard and exceeded its requirements in some areas. The research also investigates the management system approaches employed by other international integrated energy companies as they are described in their external websites and compares them to the Chevron approach. One company, ExxonMobil, has extensive documentation on their Operations Integrity Management System available on their external website. A comparison of the OEMS with the ExxonMobil system is also included. The ExxonMobil system has been maintained over several years, an external attestation to its conformance to the international standard. The high degree of comparability between the ExxonMobil system and the OEMS indicates that the OEMS could qualify as an ISO 14001 compliant management system"--Abstract.