PetroVietnam: Leading Force in Innovation

Over the past five years, the labour force of Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) has made great contributions to continuously improving labour productivity, ensuring the quality of constructions, products and services, reducing production costs and product prices, and saving thousands of billions of Vietnamese dong each year.

Saving over VND2 trillion from initiatives
Reviewing the creative labour competition movement (2012-2017), PetroVietnam Trade Union Executive Board said: Overcoming many difficulties and challenges arising from financial crisis and global economic recession, and plummeting oil prices which caused huge impacts on the group’s operations, PetroVietnam still had 2,205 technical innovation initiatives, including 1,764 unit-level initiatives and 61 group-level initiatives. Those initiatives have helped the group to save more than VND2 trillion. In addition, 178 employees were awarded Certificates and Medals for Creative Labour by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour; 68 authors and co-authors were recognised to have group-level initiatives; and nine individuals were awarded Certificates of Creative Labour by the PetroVietnam Trade Union. In addition to this economic benefit, those initiatives are also valuable to the society and other industries in the country.

Three units reach the Quality Innovation Index - 2017
The Quality Innovation Index (QII) is a business support model by survey and assessment of continuous improvements, launched annually by the Asia Pacific Quality Organisation in cooperation with the InterConformity (a Germany-based international assessment and certification agency) and Global GTA Organisation. QII aims to help businesses develop innovative ideas with their suppliers; actively create competitive advantages in terms of products, services and brands; encourage companies to protect their brands and compete with quality according to international standards; perfect operational strategies on the basis of applying advanced management systems and models and further promoting innovation factors in businesses in the spirit of mastering and applying new technology into business and production on the principle of achieving efficiency and quality in accordance with international standards.

The programme surveyed and updated profile information of more than 500 businesses as of June 2017, of which about 400 member companies have applied QII according to international quality management system standards. According to the Quality Innovation Index 2017, as many as 103 member companies excellently applied processes according to the Quality Assurance System (QAS 2017) and developed brands according to QII 2017. With important achievements in the past years and well-established brand reputation certified by assessment agencies as well as domestic and international business communities, three units of PetroVietnam - PetroVietnam Exploration Production Corporation (PVEP), Binh Son Refinery and Petrochemical Company (BSR) and PVD Technical Training & Certification JSC (PVD Training ) - were certified QII-2017 and QAS-2017.

From 2012 to 2017, PetroVietnam has nearly 2,000 practical initiatives/solutions for oil and gas exploration and production, petrochemical and oil - gas processing, engineering and manufacturing, information technology - automation - electronics. These initiatives have helped the group save trillions of Vietnamese dong a year. Two projects were awarded Ho Chi Minh Prize; one was awarded State Prize of Science and Technology; and four products were honoured “Pride of Vietnam Labour Intelligence.”

Binh Minh