According to Peter Hyk, vice president of refining systems for Valero, Valero has found operational excellence success in its digital transformation by focusing on three strategic initiatives. The first was designing "best practices" business processes by engaging Valero's 14 refinery and corporate subject matter experts (SMEs).
"The implementations are very well bodied from the top down, because the leaders help design the systems and processes," Hyk said.
The second and third points of focus that helped Valero achieve its digital goals were to build "enablers" to guide and enforce these processes, as well as build management dashboard key performance indicators that compare and highlight improvements and setbacks.
"We're trying to utilize this technology to make it easier for operations folks, as well as everybody in the support organizations, to do their jobs," Hyk said.
In a keynote address discussing Valero's digital transformation at the Operational Excellence in Oil and Gas Summit held recently in Houston, Hyk shared a number of lessons learned during that transformation.
It was beneficial to engage stakeholders early in the journey, he said, by using mockups to demonstrate capabilities.
"The mockup process is very valuable to get the visual in front of the tech directors," Hyk said. "That visual mockup is not an implementation; it's more of a demo of the environment. It was very useful to us, and we stopped short of bad processes propagating by using that process."
More lessons learned
Recognizing the perception that solving all document problems would be too overwhelming was also key, Hyk said.
"That was a big mental challenge. When we looked at the documents side of this, the engineering side, it was very overwhelming, because people were trying to get everything from file shares to SharePoint sites and desk drawers and all that kind of stuff.
"People didn't understand what we were trying to do at first. They thought we were going to get rid of file shares. We had to really step back and say, 'What we really care about is this golden content of engineering documents. If you want, keep all of your other stuff in your file shares or in your desk drawers. We don't care. However, the stuff we care about is going to go into this one solution.'"
Another lesson learned was that security integrations between SAP/OpenText software can be complex.
"There are some difficulties with OpenText. It's hard to get right, but once you get it right, it works great," Hyk said. "If you're looking into going toward an OpenText solution, get the right consulting company."
Hyk also recommended using solution accelerators and blueprints to expedite implementations and planning for customizations.
"People want to have a single click. They don't want to see a spinning wheel for 20 seconds; they want instant information. Fortunately, SAP has that in their computing," he said. "OpenText has some tools, so we were able to leverage the right tool for the right purpose and almost be in real time. You click on it, and it's almost there. Our recorded history for almost 20 years is presented in less than two seconds."
Hyk said Valero also learned that SAP or OpenText upgrades and outages impact the entire process and must be planned.
"The operational world works 24/7," Hyk said. "Therefore, outages, upgrades, maintenance windows -- all those things matter when you start taking systems away from users. There are a lot of implications to how we administer IT. Offlines, workarounds -- all those things add up.
"Cyber performance matters," he concluded. "The process we used may be a little cumbersome upfront, but we're getting great results."
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