Operational Issues and Management Inventory
Oil related incidents, are generally considered to fall into two categories:
1. Operational
2. Environmental
In this step we examine the Operational issues.
CARE: Construct – Analyze – REintegrate
Begin with the operational issues because they are the problems that you face on a daily basis. Be sure to look at the broad range of issues that your company faces including costs, regulation, stewardship. We recommend that you take the CARE approach to this first phase of creating an effective Strategic Oil Management and Contingency Plan. Construct, Analyze and Reintegrate. Construct your plan by identifying the "touch points" where oil is wasted, lost through leakage, spillage or contamination; Analyze methodologies for reducing both the loss and the risk associated with each of these "touch points"; and finally REintegrate by looking at everything you have done from a systemic point of view and revisiting your previous analytical conclusions. Pay particular attention to real costs associated with the challenges that you have identified. For example: If there is an institutional separation within the corporation between those who make product acquisition decisions and those who make waste disposal decisions, what are you doing to assure that the decision making process takes into account the full range of costs associated with both the acquisition and disposal of consumables? A consumable may have a very inexpensive acquisition cost and very expensive disposal cost and if you are not reintegrating the planning process, you are going to miss the fact that a more sustainable choice on the front end will save you dollars and reputational credit on the disposal side (to say nothing of the liability issues associated with hazardous waste disposal).
Broadly Define Costs
Be sure to consider both capital costs and human costs. Both have an impact on the long term health of our company. The classic example of this is the ongoing issue around Asbestos. It is well known that a mask costing only pennies could have prevented many of the cases of mesothelioma that we are witnessing today. It is also known that there was sufficient awareness, early on, of the effects of airborne asbestos to assume that - at least in certain cases - a decision was made to save the money involved in purchasing masks. Ultimately the human costs of this decision led to both high rates of lung disease and a series of successful law suits that continue to plague the industry to this day.
Every company will examine their operational issues in a way that reflects the uniqueness of their technologies and operations. However, no matter what route you take through the maze of your operations, if you step back at the end of the process to Reintegrate your plan and take a wholistic view you will find opportunities for cost savings, better management and heightened safety in the process.