Consequence Classification Based Spare Parts Evaluation and Control in the Petroleum Industry

Abstract

Spare parts (SPs) evaluation and control (SPE&C) has been a challenging task in the onshore and offshore petroleum industry, due to the highly hazardous and capital-intensive nature of operational assets. SPE&C requires that different phases of the petroleum asset's life cycle (i.e. commissioning, operations, modifications, and decommissioning) are taken into consideration via project execution. The requirements imposed by regulatory authorities, the recommendations suggested by classification societies and standards (i.e. national and international), and the guidelines available in the internal performance standards must be taken into consideration in an SPE&C process. SPE&C also requires contributions from several stakeholders from various disciplines, such as plant integrity, materials management, project management and package responsibility, as well as original equipment manufacturers/vendors, to establish a consensus about operational and work practices. Due to the inherent nature of the operational assets, the conventional inventory control approaches and formulae are mostly superimposed by consequence classifications and risk assessments. This has resulted in a significant level of ad hoc spare part recommendations, causing significant loss to asset owners. This manuscript firstly demonstrates current SPE&C practices in the petroleum industry. Secondly, it presents frameworks to standardize SPE&C tasks. Finally, it proposes inventory policies, based on consequence and unit cost, which provide an approach to compensate for ad hoc SPA&C tasks, to minimize SP-related losses to the assets' owners.