Review and discussion of production assurance program

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review, discuss and further develop the production assurance (PA) concept; and to define and describe a typical production assurance program (PAP) and its elements. Design/methodology/approach – An explorative literature study covering PA and dependability concept was carried out on contemporary literature. During the course of the study, meetings and discussions with a number of experts in Sweden and Norway were performed. Different types of data and examples from the oil and gas industries are used to illustrate and support the discussions. Findings – This paper indicates that the concept of PA helps the decision maker to estimate whether a production plant is able to meet customer requirements, as it provides information about the production plant's delivery capacity, production rate and ability to deliver according to design or customer demands. PAP can provide a basis for effective production control. Research limitations/implications – The material analysed was mainly related to the oil and gas industry. However, the findings and discussion can be transferred to other areas of application, such as mine production plants and chemical process plants. Practical implications – A PAP is a valuable tool for production plant managers and engineers, not only for documenting a production plant's performance, but also for providing decision support for the development and optimization of the production plant to improve the plant's performance and reduce risk and uncertainties. Originality/value – In this paper the concept of dependability is extended to include capacity performance and customer requirements or market demand, which provides a measure for delivery assurance or plant production performance in relation to customer requirements. This paper also develops a generic PAP to achieve a high level of delivery assurance.