Refining Benchmarking Seminars

For Solomon CPA™ study customers, seminars are available to help participants submit their study data efficiently and accurately and discover actionable insight in the study results in order to improve your operations and profitability.

The results of the Worldwide Fuels Refinery Performance Analysis (Fuels Study) and Worldwide Paraffinic Lube Refinery Performance Analysis (Lube Study) are widely used by executive management in strategic investment decisions. Because these results directly reflect the data provided during the input phase of these studies, the work of the data coordinator and other members of the data collection team is vital. This work involves a significant time and resource commitment by refineries for their biannual participation —an average effort of 850 hours is reported study over study.

This seminar helps data coordinators and their teams to reduce the number of hours involved in inputting data by learning how to efficiently navigate and submit the Input Files, as well as successfully organize and manage their Solomon data collection project. By analyzing previous Input File submissions, the seminar focuses on areas where assistance has most often been required to resolve issues. The seminar is suited for all levels of the refinery organization that gather data for Solomon’s Fuels and Lube Studies. Length: 2-days

The output from your Worldwide Fuels Refinery Performance Analysis (Fuels Study) participation can at first seem a bit complicated and confusing. Buried deep within the overall data you will find many opportunities to improve your refinery’s performance. So how do you get started and where do you look?

Solomon’s How to Use the Data Seminar provides you the skills to navigate your way around the standard results files and identify the strengths and opportunities for your refinery. With this training, you will be able to quickly find the information you need to answer key performance questions, and you will learn how to select and compare yourself to peer groups that are most appropriate for your refinery. Additionally, you will learn how to build your own customized reports, and fully understand your key performance indicators (KPIs) and how they trend across multiple study years. Length: 2-days

The Advanced Seminar is a deeper review of the Fuels and Lube Studies, focused on the study metrics and calculations. This seminar is designed for refinery personnel assigned to mine their results data for improvement opportunities and direct performance improvement initiatives. Attendees must have completed the introductory How to Use the Data Seminar before attending the Advanced Seminar.

In preparation for the private seminar, Solomon will develop a custom spreadsheet that calculates the main key performance indicators for the refinery, including EDC®, Utilization, Energy Intensity Index™ (EII®), Volumetric Expansion Index™ (VEI™), Mechanical Availability, Operational Availability (OA), Maintenance Cost Efficiency Index (MEI™), Maintenance Personnel Efficiency Index (mPEI™), Non-Maintenance Personnel Efficiency Index (nmPEI™), and Net Cash Margin (NCM). This spreadsheet will show the step-by-step methods that you would use to turn the input tables (VI file) into the output tables (CT file).

In addition, attendees will participate in “what-if” exercises to better understand the calculations and how these data can be manipulated. Length: 2-days

These seminars are important tools to help you improve your efficiency in the study data collection process and for discovering actionable insight from the results that you receive after study results are delivered.