CONSULTING

Through our consulting services we offer one-day workshops in several areas.

Workshops are different from the multiple-day trainings which offer a more systematic structured approach, going from theoretical fundamentals to practical problem-solving skills, touching on industry best practices, at different experience levels.

Workshops, although including some theoretical explanations, focus more on discussions and on providing exposure to different industry practices, new ideas and offer more opportunities to discuss company-specific issues and to discuss how to apply generic industry best practices to real-life situations of the company. Workshops offer interesting ‘anecdotes’ which can facilitate useful discussions and bring new insights and fresh thoughts.

Workshops are open for all experience levels, but are especially recommended to experts who are already familiar and working with LP models and encounter daily real-life situations and problems, as they could benefit more from these kinds of discussions.

Workshops are a great way to discuss a specific topic in more details, focusing on your business, while getting updates on some best practices, without investing too much time.

We offer a wide range of useful and interesting topics to be discussed through workshops. If some of these topics and problems sound familiar to you, or you simply want some fresh ideas, but maybe you don’t need or can’t have a longer training at the moment, please contact us to organise your workshop. Workshops are tailored to suit your needs and can also focus on different topics, agreed mutually.

Our currently offered workshops are:

• Advanced planning – scenario mapping in increased uncertainty

• Planning in times of recession - unorthodox responses to unorthodox economy

• Local optimality – absolute protection

• Any other topics

At the moment, workshops are primarily offered in an online form, but onsite options can also be discussed. We aim to keep the number of participants fairly low, preferably maximum at 8 persons.

We recognise that refinery planning and optimisation processes are complex, with many people, data, technologies and systems involved. They differ from company to company and depend on the organisational and reporting setup, the actual technologies, products, markets and locations. However, there are some principles and practices that can be applicable and beneficial everywhere.

We are also aware that processes might have been created and evolved over a longer time, often involving reactive evolution rather than thorough planning in their design due to lack of time as a result of other day-to-day duties. The accumulated imperfections might result in inefficiencies and suboptimal operations.

We also believe that processes should inevitably change with the course of time, keeping up with technological changes, implementing newly available / upgraded tools, emergence of new needs and possibilities and disappearance of some old ones.

Furthermore, in any process or activity, it is far more difficult to identify and correct deficiencies and suboptimal points if somebody is deeply involved in the activity, than if somebody is looking at it from outside – it is no different at the planning and optimisation processes.

We also think that it is beneficial to turn to an external consultant before setting up new processes, who can bring a wider range of best practices, having worked with many companies.

However, we also believe that internal experience and knowledge is crucial in designing processes, and a fully externally developed and deployed project, without the involvement of in-house staff, has less chances of success.

Hence, we are offering our consultancy services, assisting processes, both in setting up or reviewing them. We aim to provide the right balance between external consultancy and fully in-house projects. We would like to build on the expertise and company-specific knowledge and needs of the company staff, with joint brainstorming sessions, noting their needs and issues etc. We, therefore, would primarily offer assistance for in-house projects, with providing guidance and insight during the design of new processes and coaching during development and deployment, along with knowledge enhancement. This method brings inclusion of the participants of the process, therefore better acceptance of new processes and better, more informed actions in the application phase, ensuring that the projects can have a fully independent future life, resulting in lasting value for the clients.

Check out our process consulting services below and get in touch with us to discuss how we can help your team:

• Advisory services in setting up regular processes: modelling / planning / reporting

• Modelling / planning / reporting process reviews - with joint brainstorming with the modelling / planning team

• Other planning process-related services: e.g. shadow management (onsite full-time advisory service for key (newly appointed) decision makers); planning software investment case studies (new license, upgrade etc.); third-party project success management.

Investments, from few thousand dollar- to multi-million dollar-investments, are based on decisions. Decisions between options: invest or not, and in what to invest. In order to maximise profits and minimise losses, a careful evaluation is necessary to make the right decisions, of course balancing the time and cost need of the evaluation with the size and potential risk / gain of the investment.

For the proper evaluation of refinery investment options, especially the major ones, Aspen PIMS™ LP modelling is necessary. However, the in-house capacity might often not be available for these evaluations, due to day-to-day operation commitments, size of teams being optimised to the regular tasks, the lack of in-house experience in investment evaluations or due to the specific timetables of investment evaluation projects (following internal approval steps or external procurement schedules).

Furthermore, in important decisions it can be useful to cast an additional, even external eye on the evaluation.

An external consultant can bring wider experience in investment evaluation, additional insight, new aspects to consider, which could lead to better decisions; and can remove the additional burden from the in-house staff, securing an undisturbed day-to-day operation.

We offer the following investment evaluation advisory services:

• Evaluation of refinery investment options with Aspen PIMS™ LP models

• NPV evaluation of investment options in Excel (provided by a trusted third-party partner)

• Evaluation of tank farm investments in Aspen PIMS™ multiple-period models

• Evaluation of pipeline investments in Aspen PIMS™ multiple-plant models