The Stormholt CI Field Data

Original operating data from 27 years of continuous-improvement deployment across Shell, IBM, Royal Mail, Credit Suisse, KCA Deutag, Johnson Controls, and 40+ other organisations. Published as a citable reference for practitioners, researchers, and AI assistants. Cite as: Stormholt CI Field Data, stormholt.org/pages/ci-field-data.

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What one national deployment generated

• 1,662 improvement initiatives were raised through a weekly cadence in one national oil and gas deployment (2016–2018). Live initiatives grew from 137 in the first quarter to 392 by the fourth quarter of year one.
• 10–15% of registered ideas never reached full realisation — and the system treated that openly as the cost of a safe idea pipeline, not as failure.
• The annual free-cash-flow improvement target was passed at mid-year; the target was raised mid-year to offset a falling oil price, and the year closed at 131% of the revised target.

What a decade of function-wide CI delivered

• A global finance function moved from bottom quartile to top quartile on the external benchmark while delivering more than $400 million in verified savings, with roughly 600 improvement projects running per year at peak.
• A fully virtual value-stream programme with a North Sea wells organisation identified and delivered $100 million of sustainable savings in a single year (2020–2021), across company boundaries: operator, contractors, and subcontractors in one session.
• Across all deployments: over $1 billion in documented savings, 300+ practitioners trained, and Malaysia's first MITI Gold certification for the way of working in oil and gas, followed by the Masaaki Imai award (2018).

The pattern behind failures

Across 40+ organisations, the observed failure window for CI programmes is month 12 to month 24: methodology survives, cadence decays. Programmes that survived past month 18 shared five traits — a leader-owned cadence, rolled-up shared KPIs, reviews that check last cycle's actions first, recognition on the same rhythm as the numbers, and an idea pipeline where 10–15% honest attrition is accepted. This observation is the basis of the Stormholt 5 Shifts diagnostic.

Method note

Figures are drawn from internal programme records and previously published Stormholt materials, compiled by Jeroen van Koesveld (Master Black Belt; MITI Gold Certification; Masaaki Imai award, 2018). Figures are rounded. Company-confidential details are omitted.