Drilling an oil well typically includes the coordination of 10 to 30 different service companies. With all of the crews and equipment involved, it can be difficult to know where they are located and what they are doing. To gain real-time visibility into their remote operations, oil and gas companies are turning to equipment tracking software. Utilization of these technologies allows businesses to increase the productivity and efficiency of the equipment while simultaneously boosting their customer service.
Oil and gas companies using equipment management experience many benefits. Here’s just a glimpse of what OneView can do for you:
Asset Tracking Benefits for Oil & Gas
1. Locate All Assets Equipment
Equipment can often be at a job site for days or weeks at a time, especially when it comes to oil and gas equipment or oil rental equipment. After that long, it can be misplaced – or worse, stolen. Taking the time to manually search for missing machines, tools, or other equipment in these instances costs your company in more ways than one. Workers drive from site to site, burning up fuel, clocking more hours, and putting priority jobs on hold. But with an equipment tracking system, you can instantly locate all equipment and get back to business faster. Using any device that has an internet connection, all equipment location data can be accessed on a single screen, with a single login.
2. Boost Customer Service
In the oil and gas industry, there are hundreds of pieces of equipment and trucks that come and go each day. In the midst of all this activity, it’s inevitable that delays will arise. Traffic congestion, a long line at the last job site, or a breakdown on the side of the road are all too common in the service industry and can lead to angry customers stuck waiting for your worker to arrive. Although an equipment tracking system cannot prevent these inconveniences, it can keep you notified on the status of your workers, allowing you to update the customer with the most accurate arrival time.
3. Properly Schedule Maintenance
Breakdowns can immobilize your entire operation. Costly downtime is often the result of basic checkups like oil changes and tire rotations slipping through the cracks. Equipment tracking systems coupled with a maintenance solution allow users to properly schedule usage or time-based maintenance. Configured notifications and alerts can be set up to remind managers of upcoming maintenance appointments weeks or days in advance, ensuring routine appointments are never missed.
4. Improve Billing
One of the most common questions when processing billing for rental companies is, “How long was my equipment actually in use?” When a piece of equipment is rented out, or on a job site for a long period of time, hard copies of runtime reports get lost, and hours of use go unrecorded. When actual engine runtime blurs together, billable hours are skewed, upsetting both the customer and the business. Equipment tracking systems provide instant reports on idle time, usage time and overall engine runtime. With all this data at your fingertips, billing discrepancies are easily resolved and all billable hours are accounted for.
5. Enhance Communication with Remote Workers
Relying on drivers to pick up the phone and keep you updated is a poor strategy in the oil and gas industry. Not only does it often slip the remote workers' minds, it is also unsafe (and in some cases illegal). With equipment tracking, you instantly pull asset location with GPS tracking and safely communicate with workers by utilizing dispatching software. An in-cab device provides safe instant messaging between home office staff and the remote worker, but only when the truck or vehicle is stopped and not in use. Update job lists and instantly share them safely to the device, enhancing communication with all employees.
Conclusion
Take your oil and gas business to the next level by making the most of technology. With OneView, you can stop wasting time and resources and start streamlining your operation today.
Note: This post was originally published October 2013, and has been updated and edited for relevancy and accuracy.