The employees have been formally accredited as Lean practitioners for implementing projects, which have eradicated waste and unnecessary or uneconomic work practices.

Their success is contributing to multi-million dollar savings and helping in making time for more productive tasks and activities.

The staff gave presentations to members of PDO''s managing director''s committee on their individual projects before being awarded certificates to mark their official international accreditation as Lean practitioners.

Their work has led to work improvements across the full spectrum of the company''s work from subsurface activities to support services such as recruitment Raoul Restucci, PDO managing director said, ''I congratulate all our Lean practitioners who have become agents for change and transforming the way we work.

''Their Lean initiatives have helped us simplify our work processes, reduce costs and strip out red tape and waste so that we deliver more value for Oman.

He added, ''We now have 160 Lean practitioners in PDO who are leading by example and empowering colleagues to participate in our business improvement journey. Their projects are making a real difference to how we do things, are sustainable and can be replicated elsewhere in our organisation and beyond.''

One project showcased a standardisation of well and reservoir management surveillance, which has increased oil production, cut costs and halved work times, and can be used in all reservoir types.

Another has led to the automation of PDO''s well-testing system in Nimr, freeing up the time of programmers who had to previously validate tests manually.

Lean originated with Toyota in Japan as a means of driving efficiency across the value chain by making changes (often small-scale) and has since been further refined into a system used by businesses across the world aiming to do more for less.

PDO first introduced the new ways of working in 2009 and has since rolled it out across all aspects of the business, streamlining work procedures and driving continuous business improvement across the organisation.