As the owner of Libya’s largest refinery, the Libyan Emirates Oil Refining Company (LERCO) relies on effective spare parts management to ensure operational reliability, minimise downtime, and optimise maintenance schedules. In such a complex environment, critical equipment such as pumps, compressors, and valves must be maintained efficiently, as unplanned failures can lead to significant production losses. To address this challenge, LERCO engaged Qabas to deliver a focused capacity-building programme aimed at enhancing their spare parts management practices, ensuring parts availability during both planned maintenance and emergencies.
The Situation
LERCO’s refinery operations involve managing a vast and diverse range of critical equipment that require timely maintenance to keep production running smoothly. The storage and management of spare parts are central to this process, but inefficiencies in inventory management, overstocking, parts obsolescence, and delays in locating critical components during emergencies were creating operational bottlenecks. Furthermore, as LERCO increasingly focuses on proactive maintenance strategies, such as predictive maintenance, there was a growing need for better-aligned spare parts management practices to avoid disruptions and maintain equipment reliability.
The key challenges included ensuring the availability of critical spare parts when needed, reducing excess inventory costs, and integrating spare parts management with predictive maintenance schedules. LERCO recognised the importance of upskilling its team to handle these demands more effectively, leading to the decision to engage Qabas for a comprehensive training and capacity-building course.
Our Approach
Qabas delivered an intense training programme designed to equip LERCO’s technical and management staff with the skills and knowledge necessary for optimising spare parts management. The course covered:
- Inventory Management Techniques: Provided training on best practices for categorising, tracking, and controlling spare parts, with a focus on criticality assessment, usage patterns, and optimising stock levels.
- Predictive Maintenance Integration: Introduced methods for aligning spare parts availability with predictive maintenance schedules, ensuring timely replacements and reducing unplanned downtimes.
- Efficient Storage and Retrieval Systems: Covered strategies for improving the storage layout, organisation, and retrieval processes to minimise delays during emergencies and maintenance operations.
- Cost Control and Waste Reduction: Focused on techniques to avoid overstocking, reduce waste through better lifecycle management, and manage the risk of parts becoming obsolete.
- Real-World Case Studies and Practical Exercises: Engaged participants in case studies and hands-on exercises directly relevant to LERCO’s operational environment, allowing them to apply what they learned in a practical context.
Implementation
The training was delivered through a mix of theoretical sessions, interactive discussions, and practical exercises, ensuring that participants gained both the technical knowledge and the practical skills needed to improve their spare parts management. The sessions included real-world scenarios tailored to LERCO’s specific challenges, enabling the team to immediately implement improvements in their day-to-day operations.
Results
Following the course, LERCO’s team gained a deeper understanding of effective spare parts management practices, leading to better alignment with maintenance needs and more efficient inventory control. The enhanced skills have helped reduce the risk of critical equipment failures and minimised downtime due to better-organised and more accessible parts inventory. This capacity-building initiative has not only strengthened LERCO’s operational reliability but also contributed to a more proactive and cost-effective approach to managing their maintenance operations.
