Raul Trochez, plant manager at INVISTA’s chemical intermediates site in Orange, Texas, is leading his facility through tremendous expansion — a more than $100 mil-lion investment and revolutionary technology for adiponitrile (ADN) production. Leading change is not an easy task but a necessary one for operational excellence.
“As leaders, we must create a vision for the organization that everyone shares,” explained Trochez. “We must ensure we are attracting and developing the best talent and have the right people in the right roles and that they have clearly defined roles, responsibilities and expectations that are aligned with the site’s vision and, in turn, the business vision. We also need to understand our capabilities within the competitive marketplace and put key business-driver measures in place that lead to profitable actions and performance.”
Trochez has been at INVISTA’s Orange site since 2009 when he began serving as site manager for the company’s nylon intermediates facility following a post in Wilton, England, as plant manager for INVISTA’s intermediates and polymers plant. Trochez, who was born in Honduras in Central America and moved to the United States when he was 15 years old, has an associate degree in nuclear engineering and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering technology. He began his career at New England Nuclear, which was later acquired by DuPont Medical Products, and he served in various positions with DuPont including mechanical engineer, technical man-ager and senior financial analyst before relocating to Spain in an operations role during the construction of a new chemical plant.
Upon returning to the United States, Trochez became a global asset productivity manager and a Six Sigma Champion for DuPont’s LYCRA® fiber business. He later managed operations for the company’s La Porte, Texas, facilty and next served as the nylon operations business unit manager in Waynesboro, Va. In May 2004, Koch Industries acquired DuPont’s chemical intermediates and fibers business, named INVISTA. As an employee of INVISTA, Trochez served as operations manager for the Victoria, Texas, site’s ADN and hexamethylene diamene (HMD) plants before relocating to England.
A significant improvement
INVISTA is one of the world’s largest integrated producers of polymers and fibers, primarily for nylon, spandex and polyester applications, and operates in more than 20 countries across North America, South America, Europe and Asia Pacific. INVISTA’s Orange site is located on 70 acres with the DuPont Sabine River Works facility. The site was built as part of the nylon fiber manufacturing boom in the 1940s, beginning with the construction of the adipic acid unit in 1946 and followed by the HMD unit in 1947. In 1971, the ADN unit was built. Principal products including ADI-PURE® adipic acid, ADN and HMD are nylon intermediate chemicals used in the manufacturing of nylon fiber and are transported to INVISTA customers by rail, truck and barge in various forms of liquids and bulk solids.
In 2012, INVISTA announced an initial $100 million investment for the Orange site and unveiled new technology for ADN production. Benefits of the new technology include improved product yields, reduced energy consumption, lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, enhanced process stability and reduced capital intensity, compared to existing technologies. Another environmental benefit of the new ADN technology is it virtually eliminates benzene from the production process.
“We believe this new generation of ADN technology represents a significant improvement versus the proprietary technology we operate today, which is already the world’s most advantaged ADN technology,” explained Trochez.
INVISTA’s existing processes use six times less electricity than alternative production technologies and result in significantly lower CO2 emissions.
INVISTA has been operating the new technology for more than two years at a pilot-scale facility at its research and development center in Orange.
“In addition to the deployment of the technology here at Orange, which is currently underway, INVISTA now has the option of installing it at its existing facilities in Victoria, in addition to a plant INVISTA is constructing in China,” said Trochez.
Operations excellence
Aside from the new ADN technology the site is deploying, INVISTA is making significant investments in improving its infrastructure, reliability, utilization of its raw materials, and energy usage.
“My primary role is to lead our more than 500 employees to achieve and sustain superior results in environmental, health and safety compliance and overall operations excellence so we can deliver high-quality raw materials for our customers and create long-term value for our shareholders,” said Trochez.
This is accomplished through teamwork and diligence.
“We strive to create an environment where people are encouraged to seek and share knowledge and challenge the status quo,” said Trochez. “We train our employees to behave as principled entrepreneurs, have a sense of urgency, use good critical and economic thinking skills, be intellectually honest and make decisions based on reality.
“With regard to safety, we are relentless in our pursuit of what we call 10,000-percent compliance, meaning 100 percent of employees complying 100 percent of the time. We strive to honor the community’s consent to operate through safe day-to-day operations and good environmental stewardship. We provide our employees with extensive training, and when we do make a mistake, we go to great lengths to learn from it and make improvements."
After their recovery from Hurricane Ike, the team has continued to focus on environmental, health and safety improvements, as well as on becoming more competitive globally. This includes continuing to advance their Market-Based Management® (MBM) culture, which is another source of competitive advantage.
“The application of MBM in all that we do is at the core of our shareholder’s success,” explained Trochez.
MBM is a holistic approach that combines theory and practice and prepares organizations to deal successfully with the challenges of growth and change through five dimensions — vision, virtues and talents, knowledge processes, decision rights and incentives.
“Along with those dimensions, we have our 10 guiding principles that articulate our shared values and beliefs, which help set our norms and behavior and guide our individual actions,” said Trochez.
Those guiding principles are integrity, compliance, value creation, principled entrepreneurship, customer focus, knowledge, change, humility, respect and fulfillment.
“The application of MBM to operational excellence and the significant investment in the growth of the plant and business is creating an exciting opportunity for our employees in Orange,” said Trochez. “Operating in a global economy is challenging, and to achieve operations excellence, we must adapt quickly to ensure we continue to provide for our customers in an efficient and responsive manner — all while maintaining our primary focus on operating safely and minimizing environmental impacts.”
Another challenge is attracting and retaining a skilled work force — especially in the Southeast Texas region.
“We continually challenge ourselves to make INVISTA the most attractive overall employment opportunity for our employees and potential employees so that they consistently choose INVISTA over careers with other companies,” said Trochez.
Good corporate citizens
The team at INVISTA Orange supports a variety of philanthropic causes throughout the Golden Triangle region, including the United Way, Junior Achievement, Shangri La Botanical Gardens, the Symphony of Southeast Texas, Lamar University and Lamar State University, just to name a few.
“We focus our community investments in the areas of community enrichment, human services, enablement of youth and education, emergency response and environmental stewardship,” explained Trochez. “We endeavor to be good corporate citizens and encourage employee involvement in causes that enhance the quality of life in the communities in which we operate.
“The employees of INVISTA Orange also are very generous to volunteer their own time to support a variety of causes important to the community. They make me proud. I am optimistic about the future of our facility and plans for growth. I am confident we will get to where we want to be because of our team.”
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INVISTA Orange Site
3055A FM 1006
Orange, TX 77630
(409) 883-8411
Products: ADI-PURE® adipic acid, adi-ponitrile and hexamethylene diamene
Employees: More than 500Size: 70 acres
