Performance Improvement Solutions

Solomon gives you the tools to improve your performance.

Solomon’s Fuels Refinery Performance Analysis (Fuels Study) is used around the globe—North and South American; Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; Asia/Pacific/Indian Ocean—to drive internal discussions of refinery performance issues. By giving you valuable insight into the key performance areas of your own refineries as well as industry trends, these studies foster the continuous improvement needed to remain competitive. >Read more

The Worldwide Paraffinic Lube Refinery Performance Analysis (Lube Study) provides you the opportunity to see how your facilities compare to the competition. The study represents nearly three-quarters of the lube base oil capacity in North America, South America, and Europe. You can be assured that your management decisions are based on the objective, third-party perspective for which Solomon is known.

Clients utilize our 3D Analysis to gain a detailed perspective of gross margin and operating expense gap root causes in such areas as process unit yields, energy consumption, catalyst cost, maintenance effectiveness, turnaround performance, and strategic investment history. This analysis, which does not require additional data collection and validation, provides specific and actionable results, showing exactly where performance can be improved and by how much (versus the best performers in the world).

This analysis gives Fuels and Lube Study participants a benchmark that is closer to their configuration and operations than a standard peer group, which is typically based on size and complexity or geographic area. Clients can choose specific peer group characteristics from our worldwide database, such as “best of the best” in yields, refineries with large coking capacity, significant marine shipping, or those that also produce petrochemicals.

This user-friendly software helps you extract data from your systems on a monthly basis, allocate it to the appropriate categories, and calculate key Solomon metrics using the latest methodology. With Profile II, you can continue to monitor your refinery’s performance and automate the data collection process, significantly decreasing the amount of time needed to populate the biennial studies.

Whether you are in need of measuring your total greenhouse gas emissions or identifying energy conservation steps to reduce them, this analysis, which uses Solomon’s unique Carbon Emission Intensity (CEI™) metrics, will help you find the answers you seek.

Solomon’s International Study of Plant Reliability and Maintenance Effectiveness (RAM Study) provides you insight into the factors primarily impacting the effectiveness of reliability and maintenance at your refinery. The study clearly identifies and quantifies areas for improved maintenance performance. >Read more

Solomon’s Worldwide Refinery Quality Control Performance Analysis (QC Study) is designed to answer the fundamental question: “Is your refinery over- or under-testing?” The QC Study can determine the overall efficiency of your quality control program to help you understand and manage refinery quality control costs and activities to provide the best balance between quality giveaway and costs.

The Fluid Catalytic Cracking Performance Analysis (FCC Study) is designed to leverage valuable performance data on these units at anytime you choose to participate. With a library of more than 50 catalytic cracking units in the last four years alone, there is significant opportunity to compare each FCC unit against a number of units of similar size, configuration, technology, and feed quality.

Give your management team the ability to review your multifaceted fuels/lube refineries with others in the same category to get the broader perspective needed to address performance gaps in such a complex environment.

By assessing the contributions made by advanced process control (APC) to individual refinery unit performance, you can utilize Solomon’s Worldwide Advanced Process Control Performance Analysis (APC Study) to provide the quantitative backup needed to justify upgrades for control and automation.

Leveraging a combined review of automation performance and distributed control systems (DCS) through Solomon’s Worldwide Distributed Control System/Automation Performance Analysis (DCS/Automation Study), your team can answer a range of questions to assign a true, monetary value to many areas of improved control, from which units have the most potential for increased margin to how many of your competitors are upgrading their DCS.

Solomon’s Worldwide Turnaround Performance Analysis (Turnaround Study) is designed to help your team determine the most effective method for remaining reliable while controlling turnaround costs stemming from stringent safety and environmental regulations, rising labor rates, and increasing production demands among other areas.>Learn more

For more than two decades, the world’s olefin manufacturers—currently 70% of the production capacity—have relied on Solomon’s biennial Worldwide Olefin Plant Performance Analysis (Olefin Study) data to understand where their largest performance improvement opportunities lie and how much margin that performance gap is worth to prioritize programs to capture the maximum margin.

Started by demand from the industry, Solomon’s Worldwide Butadiene Plant Performance Analysis (Butadiene Study) provides the insight you need to improve processes across your butadiene extraction facility, including how to optimize personnel and maintenance expense to attain maximum reliability and operability, all the while minimizing lost production due to both operational and non-operational causes.

With the most detailed look at performance in aromatics manufacturing—more than any other study available—Solomon’s Aromatics Manufacturing Performance Analysis (Aromatics Study) provides the global picture of how you measure up to the most optimized and highest performing plants operating today.

WWith a current database of more than 50 pipeline companies representing 250 pipeline systems worldwide, and specific regional studies for North America, South America, and Europe, Solomon’s Worldwide Liquid Pipeline Study (Pipeline Study) can chart your performance as it compares to the rest of the industry, regardless of whether you are carrying refined products, crude oil, natural gas liquids, or petrochemicals.

Whether your receipts and deliveries are by marine, pipeline, road, or rail, in our Worldwide Liquid Terminals Study (Terminals Study), we are normalizing for terminal complexities to give you an accurate idea of your performance in this diverse industry to help you improve your maintenance programs and reliability. The current database contains more than 30 terminal companies representing 200 terminals worldwide.

Specific to the transmission system, our Natural Gas Transmission System Performance Analysis (NGTS Study) looks at more than 130 thousand miles of pipeline across various dimensions—the impact of delivery interruptions, costs related to maintenance, personnel and capital investment, etc.

Being closely associated with natural gas pipelines, Solomon is often able to use its vast processing experience to compare diverse gas plants of all sizes, including those with fractionation and sulfur recovery facilities. The Solomon study includes gas plants on five continents.

With a concentration in North America and Europe for highly volatile liquids and natural gas, the Underground Storage Performance Analysis (Underground Storage Study) provides results on not only the typical operations and maintenance, but keys in on well workovers and cavern inspections.

With a Solomon Power CPA, we not only give you a sense of where you stand compared to your peers, we also provide you with the analysis necessary to improve performance at the unit-level. We guide you every step of the way—from data collection to a comprehensive analysis across a spectrum of key performance indicators in the areas of maintenance and reliability, personnel, fuel conversion efficiency, and expenditures.

The premier software in the US for reporting reliability data to NERC and the ISOs…making your job easier than ever. GADS NxL has a user-friendly and intuitive interface, ensures that your data is accurate as possible, and enables you to perform your own calculations across many key performance indicators.

Solomon’s NCM³ methodology and experienced consulting team will pinpoint the areas for improvement necessary to maximize your margins through an effective mix of no- or low-cost projects. The NCM³ scope is tailored to meet your needs—whether you want a comprehensive program that examines all aspects of your business or you simply want to focus on a specific area…we have the answer. All of the following elements can be combined into a complete program, or any one can be offered as a separate module:

Strategy
Organizational Effectiveness
Planning & Optimization
Quality Control
Operations
Advanced Process Control
Automation/DCS
Maintenance
Reliability
Energy Management
Turnarounds/Overhauls/Tank and Pipeline Integrity
Hydrocarbon Loss
GHG Emissions Management

Q1 Day 1 mitigates the immense risk of financial loss and helps secure and enhance your investment’s return on investment by ensuring that competitive targets and best practices are integrated into your project before you execute the build—no matter how far along the design process. The result is achieving the tangible benefit of increased cash flow in the first two years of operations from your new capital investments.This flexible, tailored solution is offered in four modules that can be applied individually or collectively according to your specific needs:

Design
Organization
Operations
Project Execution

By analyzing your current situation as well as evaluating the impact of an array of “what-if” simulations, Solomon’s Tank Utilization Model (TUM) provides you a realistic means by which to formulate your tank strategy. This rules-based modeling tool incorporates Monte Carlo simulation techniques to determine your lost opportunity costs in tandem with risk associated with different potential changes in daily operations. By breaking the facility into multiple models, you can evaluate the impact of different scenarios like adding/removing tanks, increasing throughput, purchasing opportune ships of raw materials, and/or blending different grades of product. Once the models are complete, they are yours to keep for future strategic analys.

Solomon brings unparallel depth and breadth to the due diligence process by combing real-world performance data with hands-on operational and equipment expertise—our consultants know what “good looks like” and provide valuable advice to potential buyers at every stage of the transaction.>Read more

Covering the economic and optimization skills needed to maximize refinery profit, this seminar uses practical, hands-on examples to illustrate the Solomon approach to marginal economics and the workings of linear programming models, as well as to discuss planning and optimization best practices.

Learn how to unlock the value of your data to improve your performance. Participants walk through study data files to see real examples of how Pacesetters leverage the information in their study to conduct their own in-depth analysis.

In this workshop, you develop a thorough understanding of your performance compared to others as we “mine your data” and dissect your results. The end goal is to teach you how to diagnose performance problems, generate and prioritize potential solutions, and create an action plan for implementing improvement.

In this workshop, you develop a better understanding of the physical properties of hydrocarbons and learn how refinery process units manipulate the molecules to increase value. You also become more familiar with the jargon industry professionals like to use and gain a clear understanding of the profit drivers in the downstream industry (everything from the crude oil market to the consumer pump).