The offshore industry is currently experiencing the fourth industrial
revolution that brings new challenges to the supply chain and requires the
implementation of classical paradigms such as Lean philosophy in order to increase
efficiency and improve processes, obtaining sustainable competitive advantages
that are basic requirements for digital transformation. However, the application of
Lean in the trucking industry is still limited and there is a dearth of practical studies
on how Lean Transportation (LT) can support the improvement of offshore
operations. Thus, the objective is to apply LT techniques to reduce waste in the
dedicated transportation process for the offshore supply chain of a large oil and gas
company. To do so, it was used action research with a multi-method approach
through scoping review, focus groups and participant observation and application
of Lean tools such as Value Stream Mapping (VSM) to identify waste present in
the process and possibilities of competitive improvement for the internal logistics
area of the company under analysis, allowing a planned transport logistics with a
level of service appropriate to customer needs. As a result, there was a reduction in
waste mainly in the waiting stages of loading and unloading in dedicated road
transport through a real intervention case, resulting in the implementation of control
actions, automation and improvement of activities with a significant reduction in
downtime of the process, monetary gain of BRL 6,300,000.00 per year for the
operation and products such as a benchmarking questionnaire, action research
protocol and PDCA cycle that can be applied to other companies in the same
segment. We also identified, qualitatively, waste associated with human effort and
digital resources misused or not implemented.
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