You Must Cross That Bridge Now; Not When You Get to It
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 difficult ies 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...