Amec FW

The Challenge:

• Achieve reduction in project cost, schedule and risk through certainty of material management
• Address tracking of material movement and status across the entire supply chain, from source to offshore point of use
• Enhance safety by ensuring correct issue of appropriately certified materials and tools offshore against job cards

Introduction

Amec Foster Wheeler are a leading engineering and project management company in the Oil & Gas industry. Residing in a highly competitive market space, they are continually looking for ways to differentiate themselves from their competition and improve the service offering they provide to their customers. With this in mind they partnered with Dematic to support the rollout of DAI, a Dematic company’s Matflo Track into the Oil & Gas industry as an integral part of their engineering process.

On one recent £1.6B asset redevelopment project for a major oil company, they were faced with the challenge of managing the flow of materials through a complex supply chain to the point of offshore completion, adhering to the planned workpack schedule and offshore resourcing availability. Matflo Track provided the perfect tool to help reduce costs, increase efficiency and minimise non-productive time offshore.

Why Dematic?

Dematic as a world leader in the provision of innovative supply chain solutions across multiple industry sectors, combined with a track record of over 40 years providing advanced technical solutions to the Oil & Gas industry, were a natural partner.

The Matflo suite of products is already used extensively by many of the world’s leading companies, including the likes of Coca Cola, DHL and Tesco, as a business critical component of their supply chain.

Challenges

At a time of challenging conditions in the Oil & Gas sector, pressure is stronger than ever to find innovative solutions that reduce costs and improve efficiency, while also minimising risk and enhancing safety. The challenge was to take the experience of how Matflo had benefited other sectors and adapt the solution to meet the specific needs of the global Oil & Gas industry.

Solution

Matflo Track is a truly innovative solution for the Oil & Gas sector. It introduces material tagging, identification, control and accuracy that are standard in other industries, and delivers them in a user friendly way designed around the unique requirements of the Oil & Gas industry. Through greater accuracy and visibility of material status and movement, and ease of integration to existing engineering management systems, it improves efficiency and, most importantly, reduces costs.

From an offshore materials controller waiting on time critical material, to an onshore fabrication yard requiring materials to arrive in full, on schedule and with appropriate certification in place, Matflo Track brings certainty, accuracy, and confirmation of progress to all relevant stakeholders. This is achieved through real time visibility of individual material components from source, through fabrication, and onto eventual offshore build.

Linked with this real time view of itemised progress, it also provides a complete audit history of movement, inspection, testing, certification and installation that feeds into Operations and Maintenance for the lifetime of asset ownership.

The Result

Over the course of an initial five month flotel campaign, over 38,000 items in 258 containers were manifested, shipped and receipted offshore using Matflo Track. Of these 38,000 items, a 99.96% accuracy in materials being shipped and issued on schedule to engineers offshore was achieved.

During this initial phase, of a project that will ultimately span several years, Matflo Track has been estimated to have provided a cost saving to date of over £750,000 through the removal of unnecessary procurement, associated additional logistics costs, and offshore non-productive time relating to materials being unavailable.