Kaizen, or rapid improvement processes, focuses on eliminating waste, improving productivity, and achieving sustained continual improvement in targeted activities and processes. This philosophy promotes small, incremental changes and when routinely applied over long periods results in significant improvements. The Kaizen strategy aims to involve workers from all levels and functions in the organization in working together to address or improve a problem or process. In addition to improved operational efficiencies and reliability of products and services, successful implementation of Kaizen also brings about a step change in HSE ownership which is driven to multiple levels of the organization. The journey in implementing the Kaizen philosophy in an Assembly, Maintenance and Overhaul (AMO) facility of a global oilfield services company in Singapore will be examined in detail. The immediate impact of the Kaizen implementation is a tidy, ordered work environment and an optimized work flow for processing equipment. Both have the effect of reducing exposure and risk, and overall improve human reliability. Sustained focus and involvement of employees also helps to shift the HSE culture barometer towards an Interdependent HSE Culture in the AMO facility. Specific initiatives like the 6S program that are part of the Kaizen implementation will be discussed in detail. The successes with Kaizen will not stop at the Singapore AMO facility. Ongoing efforts to expand the implementation to other AMO locations are underway. While there have been early successes, recognizing the varying level of infrastructure and support will provide some notable challenges when driving this philosophy across a multinational organization in the Asia Pacific region. Looking further afield, expanding the Kaizen philosophy into field operations offers exciting opportunities to further drive HSE excellence throughout the organization and perhaps serve as a model for the industry.
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