Products

Model Dev & Auto-Sched

Auto-Scheduling & Optimization

Model Development & Maintenance

Refining Advantage's modeling experience is extensive in software implementation, model development, maintenance, upgrading, validation, and training and we are well versed in the major systems:

Aspen Tech PIMS, APS and MBO
Haverly GRTMPS, H/CAMS, H/Sched, and H/Comet
Honeywell RPMS
Chevron PETRO

Models are developed for:

Full refineries` or process units
Full petrochemical plant or process units
Renewable Fuels plants

While using multiple sources of data:

Crude assay data
Plant data
Test-runs
Simulation Models
RA Model Archive

Model maintenance includes Backcasting, Auditing, and Unit Model Validation.

An Auto-Scheduling & Optimization solution can be developed and integrated with your current Refinery Scheduling tools to automate routine scheduling tasks, find better, more profitable Scheduling Logistics solutions that are feasible, meet all operating constraints and produce maximum profitability.

Optimization of scheduling and blending is accomplished with various solution methods utilizing software for MIP, LP and other optimization techniques

Solutions have been developed for crude oil system (receipt, inventory, feed blending, product constraint management), gasoline blend scheduling (inventory, recipe, shipment) and lube oil and bitumen system scheduling (inventory, feed blocks, blending, shipment)

Pro Planning & Plant Eco

Production Planning

Plant Economics

Refining Advantage has been involved in the production planning cycle from the daily level to annual budgeting and can provide methodologies that enhance overall planning responsiveness and effectiveness to improve your bottom-line:

10 day LP/Scheduling plan for tactical execution
Monthly LP plan for unit optimization and spot opportunities
60 day LP/scheduling plan for crude optimization, supply balancing, and spot opportunities
90 day LP plan for maintenance integration, inventory management, and supply balancing
Annual budgeting

Crude and feedstock evaluation, selection, and optimization
Trading interface
Process unit optimization within the context of the overall operating plan
Integration of economic and logistical objectives
Production decision swing point analysis -- constraint management
Reliability contingency planning matrix for faster economic response to equipment failures
Simplified economic indicators
Plan key performance indicators
Lost profit opportunity monetization
Product giveaway monetization and reporting

Strategic Planning & Asset Optimization

Benchmarking & Gap Analysis

Strategic Plan & Bench Analysis

Refining remains an extremely competitive industry, and to survive and excel every asset needs to achieve and sustain peak performance. While the initial priority belongs with existing assets, selective strategic investment can provide a competitive edge.

An effective strategic plan starts with a pragmatic assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, generates an end goal, and assembles a prioritized and staged investment portfolio to maximize return
Our Refining Advantage team will work with you to develop and maintain a strategic plan as a living document

Regardless of the current investment climate, Refining Advantage believes it is prudent to develop and continually update an ultimate strategic asset configuration. In addition, a prioritized portfolio of potential capital investments designed to achieve this configuration is an invaluable tool when the timing proves advantageous for capital deployment.

In order to provide an objective and prioritized roadmap ensuring continual improvement in Planning, Refining Advantage recommends investing in a Planning Benchmarking study. Our team will work with the client to:

Assess the current state of crucial planning work processes and tools
Compare and contrast those to industry best and emerging practices
Delineate gap closure plans and prioritize based on economic impact
Provide guidance, vision, and skills to take your planners and schedulers to the next level, thereby unleashing your strongest asset.

Annual or biannual benchmarking can prove to be a valuable exercise to focus organizational efforts toward its end goals and institutionalize planning best practices.

Modeling Practices:

LP model complexity and usability
LP model accuracy -- unit constraints, blending constraints, optimization strategy
LP model robustness and extrapolation capability
LP model process unit representations
LP sub-model performance tracking, updating methodology and frequency
Assay maintenance and quality
LP and scheduling model consistency

Scheduling Practices:

Integration of logistics and planning
Lifting schedule performance vs. plan
Blend schedule performance vs. plan
Inventory management
Demand prediction
Scheduling horizon and event detail

Blending Practices:

Blend algorithm performance
Blend on spec first time performance
Shipment giveaway
Blending model updating methodology and frequency

Economics

Crude and feedstock selection and optimization
Unit optimization strategies
Product revenue optimization and spot opportunities
Price forecasting
Planning horizon and consistency between periods
Reliability and price contingency matrices
Lost profit opportunities

Culture

Economic awareness
Margin ownership
Commonality of purpose and teamwork

Coordination

Clarity of planning goals and execution effectiveness
Translation of LP results into Operations guidance
Identification and communication of constraint costs

Capital/Strategic Planning

Strategic plan thoroughness and quality
Systematic LP economic evaluation of capital options
Ultimate capacity/debottleneck evaluations

RaReports

RaReports is an Excel-addin developed to create reports from Aspen Tech APS daily results. RaReports can access published data from the APS database as well as memory resident data through automation calls to APS.

RaReports