(67d) Overcoming Logistical Challenges with Collaborative Technologies

All refiners?and manufacturers in general?face daunting logistical challenges including supply chain, changing product specifications, carbon legislation, and regulatory compliance. In addition, the industry faces knowledge management issues due to the reality of an aging work force. Information required to meet these challenges comes from diverse sources including, control systems, relational data stores, and disparate applications having restricted access to some users. This paper will convey the need for an event-based, real time infrastructure to create an integrated environment for situational awareness throughout the enterprise. This infrastructure is essential for supporting the automation and collaboration initiatives required to continuously improve. Its inherent design presents opportunities to the right expertise for decision making in a time-advantaged manner leveraging intranet and virtual presence technologies. The presentation will include case studies outlining how companies have leveraged a real-time infrastructure to efficiently improve their business.