NPRA Q&A '11: Refiners can benefit from advanced business intelligence systems
This article was included in one of Hydrocarbon Processing’s three daily show newspapers at the NPRA Q&A and Technology Forum in San Antonio, Texas.
Chevron has increased the operating performance and profitability of its El Segundo refinery in California by switching to advanced business intelligence techniques, a business analyst for the company said at the NPRA Q&A and Technology Forum.
Francisco Chavez addressed attendees at the forum’s plant automation session, saying the company had switched its focus to meter and data quality, including rigorous material and yield accounting.
“It all starts with process data quality,” Mr. Chavez said. “Our foundation for improving is timely and accessible accurate data.”
Previously, the company’s analysis tool of choice was Microsoft Excel. But Chevron found that Excel was leading to data silos and multiple versions of truth.
There was no easy way to monitor meter, unit and overall refinery performance, and data lacked the analysis rigor to ensure precision and accuracy, he said.
Moreover, Chevron needed a way to present info in context and enable collaborative interaction.
The path they chose was to expand their “historian” to real-time infrastructure.
Buoyed by a Sigmafine mass balancing system, the data precision and accuracy has recently improved, along with fewer data silos and only one version of the truth, Mr. Chavez said.
Other benefits include improved work flows and collaboration, a reduction of stock losses, improved accounting and situational awareness, and an ability to proactively respond.
Overall, Mr. Chavez said Chevron learned that there was no silver bullet, and that understanding the value of an “infrastructure” can be difficult. However, once implemented, the benefits revealed themselves and the refinery’s performance is improving.
“We’ve found that the best practice is focus on an evolutionary, continuous improvement approach. It’s not a big-bang solution.”
Going forward, areas of business improvement for Chevron will include increased interactivity via social media and mobile devices, Mr. Chavez said.
Chevron’s El Segundo refinery is the 17th-largest in the US with 273,000 bpd of capacity, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
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