Lessons from the automotive industry for the oil and gas sector and the transfer of quality, maintenance and lean production practices to onshore operations

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the automotive industry consolidated a set of management methods that became a reference for other sectors, including the Toyota production system, total productive maintenance, supplier oriented quality management systems and structured problem solving. This article discusses which of these methods can be transferred to the oil and gas sector, focusing on onshore drilling and well intervention operations. It is an exploratory and qualitative study based on a literature review, documentary analysis of technical standards and public records, and a professional experience report by the author, who worked for more than two decades in the automotive supply chain before taking over rig asset management in Brazilian onshore operations. The analysis shows growing convergence between the quality systems of both sectors, illustrated by the alignment of the tenth edition of API Spec Q1 with ISO 9001:2015, and identifies documented applications of lean production in gas fields and drilling campaigns. The article concludes that automotive tools are transferable when adapted to the variability of well operations and when accompanied by the culture that sustains them, and not only by their forms.