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I’m sure you’ve heard the idiom “Don’t cross that bridge till you come to it.” That is, you shouldn’t needlessly worry about concerns, problems, or difficulties that lie in the future. That may be true in our personal lives, however, in the case of operating refineries and petrochemical plants, it really doesn’t apply. Gone are the days when Scheduling and Operations could coexist in their separate silos, with a definite gap between the two.
Within a process plant lies several areas of uncaptured value. For example, when physically processing feed-stocks into highly-profitable marketable products, the difficulty of synchronizing what has been defined as the scheduled operational sequence and what is actually being executed in the operating environment seems almost insurmountable. The gap between the two impacts the schedule, resulting in a cycle of continual internal and external changes and frustrations.
Given today’s industry challenges and the need to remain competitive, this is a bridge you must cross today not later. Many companies have some form of Supply Chain Management, but few bridge the gap with operations. Here’s how they relate to one another:
- Unified Supply Chain Management: Enable cross-functional decision making across the entire supply chain, from trading to planning/scheduling, and operations to product distribution. Optimize feed-stock purchase, plan, schedule and inventory management.
- Operations Execution Management: Avoid costly corrective actions caused by wrong operations or the schedule not matching reality. Integration ensures operations is always executing on the actual schedule and scheduling is always aware of the actual operations.
A successful Unified Supply Chain and Operations Execution Management solution is a fully functional, bi-directional communicative interface between supply chain management and operations. It can:
- Provide a unified supply chain and operations management solution.
- Ensure that the right supply chain decisions are being taken to utilize the refinery efforts in the most economical way.
- Seamlessly integrate refinery scheduling and refinery operations.
- Enhance collaboration for supply chain decision making.
- Enrich scheduling & operation directions.
- Solidify that the interface will be up and running at all times, independent of system changes.
A Unified Supply Chain and Execution Management solution bridges the gap between scheduling and operations. This combined business process avoids costly schedule corrections and ensures right first-time schedule and operations. A Unified Supply Chain and Execution Management Solution can make a positive impact to the bottom line by improving supply chain and operations efficiency.
To learn more, please visit our CHEMICALS page.
