About NOV. National Oilwell Varco (NOV) is a worldwide engineering company providing products and services to the oil drilling business. With over 700 production, sales and service locations around the world, NOV is a huge actor in the business. Their regional office in Molde, Norway, specializes in engineering and has competence in producing cranes, winches, winch systems and hose stations for offshore installations, in addition to the service department. They have today 332 employees (NOV, 2011. Appendix D). Since the oil drilling business is constantly developing, the requirements from the customers are shifting as well. To fulfill the requirements from the customers, NOV Molde has a high focus on product development with a project oriented production strategy. The Aftermarket department (AM) is a huge part of the office in Molde with 140 employees whereof approximately 60 service engineers (NOV, 2011. Appendix D). This department is performing repairs, maintenance, modifications and upgrades of equipment on both onshore and offshore installations. The locations of these sites could be anywhere from the coasts along Brazil and Angola, to small workshops in the Molde region. Maintenance jobs, installations, modifications and upgrades are activities that are easy to predict because of regular service times, and makes them easy to plan. Repairs on the other hand are unpredictable, for instance because of unexpected breakdowns, and therefore require the company to be flexible enough to finish all the jobs in a respectable time. All of these are known as service jobs. Turnover 2008 Turnover 2009 Turnover 2010 36 651‟ USD 43 322‟ USD 45 330‟ USD Table 1 – Turnover (Self-made, with numbers from NOV, 2011 – Appendix D) In recent years, NOV has increased their activity and turnover. This is confirmed in table 1, which shows the turnover for the years 2008-2010. Especially from 2008 to 2009 the turnover increased significantly. In spite of this, NOV reports of a decline in their part of the industry where they operate. This has led to a reduction in sales of new cranes. As a result the backlogs have decreased as there are fewer installation jobs for AM. Despite the decline of installation jobs, the amount other service jobs has increased in the same period. Service jobs are usually corrective maintenance, which are unscheduled maintenance jobs arriving unforeseen. These are short trips which have to be planned within a few days. Today the AM has eight employees to handle th...
