Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) hosted a senior delegation from the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) to share best practice on PDO’s Lean Continuous Improvement programme.

The executive management team led by CBO President His Excellency Taher bin Salim Al Amri attended a full day engagement which shed light on PDO’s Lean Transformation journey and how employees from across the business are engaged in making small improvements, every day that deliver significant benefit for the organisation as whole.

During their visit, the team received an insight into the requirements of driving and sustaining Lean transformation, Lean principles, methodologies tools and how PDO has applied this across its operation.

HE Tahir Al Amri said, “ I would like to thank the Petroleum Development of Oman for hosting our CBO team. LEAN is an great program and can be useful for optimising our services. CBO is looking forward to benefit from an approach of continuous improvement and development that can deliver higher levels of customer satisfaction, cost optimization, and risk management.”

PDO Managing Director Raoul Restucci, who is directly steering the Lean Continuous Improvement change programme said: “It was a pleasure to host the CBO team and to showcase Lean which is a powerful approach focusing on developing people and creating an environment which encourages daily problem-solving.”

“By building a culture which embraces problems as opportunities for learning and develops managers into coaches, we are able to build teams that can continually identify and remove non-value adding waste and unnecessary complexity from our core processes.”

PDO began its Lean journey in 2009 as a response to increasing levels of complexity and rising cost. To date, over 500 managers have been trained in Lean leadership behaviours and an estimated $1.4 billion generated in terms of additional value, cost reductions and avoidance through its deployment across its business.

PDO’s Lean Deployment Lead Carl Kays, added: “According to global research, banks that have introduced Lean techniques have cut processing costs by 30% and have reduced processing time and errors by as much as 80%. Lean will undoubtedly become a source of sustainable competitive advantage for banks that adopt it fully. This is especially pertinent in the face of higher customer expectations, tighter regulatory control, and digital disruption (FinTech).”

Lean Continuous Improvement is an important part of PDO’s commitment to supporting the sustainable development of the Sultanate. The Company continues to host and share best practices with several public and private sector organisations consistent with our commitment to create value beyond our natural business boundaries.