Operational Performance Improvement

Achieve measurable performance gains through the realization of business change programs based on the integration of specific people, process and technology solution elements as part of achieving operational excellence.

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More Safe, Responsible, Reliable, Profitable and Sustainable Operations

Value-based business transformation combines the technology and capability necessary to realize the promised benefits of achieving industrial autonomy.

  • Focus on enterprise effectiveness (The right things - done right)
  • Improved organizational capabilities and capacity (Do more with less)
  • Effective application of information and technology as part of organizational knowledge management (Adaptive learning)
  • Leverage AI and digital platforms to promote situational awareness, automate workflow, and improve decision making as part of Work 4.0. (Work smarter) and the journey to industrial autonomy.
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Technology to Ensure Effective Integration of People and Process

In a survey conducted by KBC and IQPC, respondents were widely in agreement (79%) that having an operational excellence mindset would help them on the path to a safer, more reliable and more profitable organization. However, respondents demonstrated a general uncertainty towards a clear vision of how operational excellence is defined. This is where the KBC can support. We'll help you achieve safe, responsible, reliable and profitable operations by leveraging the latest technologies, developing highly-skilled employees and robust business processes.

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Enablers for Sustainable Results

Yokogawa and KBC’s integrated delivery provides value-based business transformation and implementation consulting powered by business intelligence such as data analytics, including digital twins, advanced process controls, and application of AI, to maximize value capture and ensure long term sustainability. Smart technology can catapult you in many ways. It empowers employees to make intelligent decisions based on the data insights across a spectrum. Smart technologies offer operational flexibility and help in knowing ahead of time before anything in the operations chain is compromised.

People

Worker Empowerment: Providing skills and support to enable high quality decision making. Creating a continuous learning environment that promotes sharing of knowledge and skill is key to worker empowerment and improved decision making. This is part of becoming an Adaptive Learning Organization and promotion of Operational Discipline based on understanding the WHY. Individual and Team Behaviors represent the key control variables (the pressure, temp, flow of the organization) and as such must be clearly defined, developed, measured and managed.

Process

Worker Enablement: Improving Enterprise Effectiveness and promotion of predictive decision making. Enterprise Effectiveness can be defined by the right things, done right. This, therefore, is dependent on the organizational ability to identify the right things. This concept is also critical for organizational alignment and the cascading of the desired business results. Our Objective is Simplicity and Clarity. The process of workflow management and defining critical competencies are the pre-requisite for process automation (effective application of technology).

Technology

Providing right individuals with required tools and information at the right time - Improved Strategic Decisions and Situational Awareness. Once the organizational competencies and required processes have been defined, technology can effectively be deployed to enable the process and optimize business decisions. According to KBC, digitalization is about the improvement of workflows and processes, changes in supply chain relationships, and the application of knowledge and information rather than ‘just data’. KBC sees digitalization in the context of the digital applications and capabilities needed to achieve operational excellence.

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Industrial Autonomy

Yokogawa and KBC’s integrated delivery provides value-based business transformation and implementation consulting powered by business intelligence such as data analytics, including digital twins, advanced process controls, and application of AI, to maximize value capture and ensure long term sustainability. Smart technology can catapult you in many ways. It empowers employees to make intelligent decisions based on the data insights across a spectrum. Smart technologies offer operational flexibility and help in knowing ahead of time before anything in the operations chain is compromised.

Find out more

Prerequisites to Industrial Autonomy

Strategic Alignment
Trusted and Committed Leadership
Adaptive Learning Organization
Workflow Management
Center of Excellence
Advanced Visualization
Asset Reliability
Process Stability
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The ability to cascade the operational strategy in terms of value drivers is critical to setting the organizational priorities. These priorities define the RIGHT things as part of improved enterprise effectiveness and operational excellence. 

Successful plant operations models will connect not only operations and systems, but processes, maintenance, and production goals across geographic locations and as a unified whole. These connected plants will empower employees to perform high-level work while co-learning with colleagues and generating the best results.

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Operational discipline can be driven by leadership, however effective delegation and subsequent coaching and mentoring as part of building TRUST, can empower an organization and drive the commitment required for business transformation.  

Demonstration of commitment through actions and not just words, represents the distillation of corporate VALUES to all levels with the organization.

As clients attempt to navigate through the significant organizational change required to achieve Operational Excellence, they will encounter numerous cultural and acceptance challenges; how an organization responds or prepares for these will decide their success.

KBC is ideally positioned to support clients through the key transition points by leveraging our experience and various tools, systems and processes.

This begins with ensuring that each individual has the required competencies to be successful and the organization as a whole, has established the required performance support systems and access right information at the right time.

The complexity of the energy and chemical industries’ workflows means that boundary conditions between disciplines are often set arbitrarily in order to allow both groups to work in parallel, and project time constraints mean that full optimization is not carried out even though there is still room to improve.

To digitalize such processes, a deeper level of digitalization may be required, one that natively integrates the technical tools used by the different disciplines. By truly integrating at this level any changes in one part of the complete system are instantly reflected in the designs for the other disciplines. This makes iteration instantaneous and seamless, without needing action, whether driven by a workflow system or not.

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Smart businesses are connected businesses that build knowledge and frameworks for growth while implementing smart industry concepts.

Our experts from the Energy and Chemical industry have decades of experience working with the world’s leading operating companies. We can provide insight and guidance on how to improve plant yield, reduce energy utilization, manage unforeseen disturbances, troubleshoot unfamiliar problems, respond to regulatory changes, sensibly apply latest information and automation technologies, debottleneck constraints, select the best feedstock, and schedule and optimize distribution.

Integrated management systems allow data visualization and provides a single source of truth to support rapid, accurate decision making.

Employees can be both connected and enabled. The connected employees enable operational unification, and collaboration to drive standardization, linking disparate teams together to make better decisions for both performance and optimum production levels. They will be able to do so securely and effectively unleash the maximum potential.

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Our world class practices manage the lifecycle of assets by maximizing overall operating profitability through asset optimization and people reliability. We help you to deliver sustainable, industry leading levels of on-stream availability and reliability, safely at competitive costs.

Our goal is to identify and implement the most appropriate processes and technologies to balance the long-term integrity of assets against the need to push production to physical limits. Monitoring conformance and managing compliance to ensure plants continuously run at optimum operating constraints.

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The refining and petrochemicals industry is facing increasing mandates for compliance and safety while also being pressed to improve production and increase operational efficiency. However, efforts to reduce risk are often seen as diametrically opposed to efforts to achieve production targets and improve production efficiency.

In order to maintain a competitive edge, the refining and petrochemicals industry must focus on creating more agile, cost-efficient and effective operations in spite of volatile market conditions.

Stability means no safety incidents, no unplanned outages, rigorous adherence to operating plans, nimble response to changes and disturbances, a motivated and informed workforce and a culture of profitability. 

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Rick Lucas

Global Operational Performance Improvement Solution Lead

Meet our expert on enterprise effectiveness

"We are passionate that everyone has the right to work in a safe environment where they feel involved, can add value and contribute to a better society. Improving enterprise effectiveness has always been the core of KBC Operational Performance Improvement solutions. The RIGHT people, doing the RIGHT things, at the RIGHT time and doing them RIGHT. It is therefore critical to fully appreciate the challenges and opportunities of integrating various people, process and technology elements as part of business value transformation. This is our passion."

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