Industrial Control Technology inventory management
A leading oil & gas company realized it would be very helpful to know what sort of inventory they have in each company location. They had left inventory and maintenance management up to each site manager to figure out since the company’s inception about a century ago. In an increasingly connected and fast-paced world, not knowing what kind of equipment they have, how old it is, what software is running on it, when the maintenance schedule is coming up or if there are any spare parts available became unacceptable. This project rounded up every site worldwide to get them to agree on a single inventory management solution, how it would be implemented and the roles and responsibilities that would be expected after deployment.
GTC's role
- GTC took the lead on change management for this project after four consultants prior to entry tried and did not find a way to break through the stakeholder barriers. I (Lailani, head of GTC) was able to coach the project team through alternative analysis, get the key stakeholders to buy into and agree on a single technology solution and get agreement from a distributed leadership group to move forward. The project budget, implementation schedule, technology and governance were approved after multiple previous attempts had been scrapped.
- I learned quickly and very clearly that the older an organization is, the harder it is to get agreement on a major change. The difficulties here were plentiful. Loudest of which was some “single ownership” mentality of the leaders within each area. There was an unwillingness to enter into shared governance and shared decision making because there was a lack of trust in people back at corporate. Breaking through that barrier meant corporate had to compromise. I was able to influence corporate to give site leaders a say in their own business. To standardize and streamline where it made sense, but be flexible to build trust long term. Sometimes, the right answer is not delivering on all the project objectives, but to deliver something that is right for everyone involved.
