Innovating and improving
THE commercial operations manager at Geelong refinery, Vanessa Kearney, told the 2018 Victorian Manufacturing Showcase how an innovation program was helping to make Viva energy more efficient. This is an edited transcript of her presentation.
IT’S no secret some large-scale manufacturing facilities are struggling to be competitive in Australia, particularly in recent times but, despite these challenges Viva Energy has made a strong commitment to manufacturing at the Geelong refinery, investing more than $300m over the past almost four years.
Our innovation program is part of a broader strategy to improve our competitive position and create a sustainable business .
What does an innovation program look like at a facility that has operated for more than 60 years, has largely been making the same product, and has a pretty stable but diverse workforce?
The first thing is that instead of ‘innovation’ we talk about continuous improvement, as most of our workforce doesn’t relate to their role and the things that they can do on a daily basis to innovation.
We have been running an innovation initiative for about two years and three concepts have proved the most important and are already delivering results: Embracing technology; chasing incremental gains; and upskilling our people.
Embracing New Technology At the refinery there are a number of large critical pieces of rotating equipment and a key is predicting when you need to take them down for maintenance and how to minimise the downtime.
This is where we have embraced new technology in the form of a predictive analysis program and realtime screens that enable our reliability team to quickly see the important health parameters of the machines.
They have an entire wall covered with digital drawings and information, colour-coded to indicate the real time status of various processes. It’s affectionately known at the refinery as the ‘wonderwall’.
Another example of digital improvement is the use of thermal imaging cameras at the jetty which turn night into day and clearly show us where in the pipes the oil is at all times.
We also use a piece of equipment called an EMAT, an electromagnetic magnetic acoustic transducer, to check pipelines by sending a sound into a structure and measuring the response.
Where we used to test a range of locations along a pipe, now we run the EMAT down 100 per cent of the pipe in less time and achieve a more accurate result in identifying any issues that require preventative maintenance.
We have also trialled a form of high-integrity protective coating on our pipes called Stopaq and we are the first business to use this coating in this part of the world.
Even in areas like safety, we are finding ways to use technology to gain efficiency.
We have a new facefit machine that uses a computer to quickly measure an individual’s facial dimensions for breathing apparatus which used to be a time intensive and inconvenient process. Chasing Incremental
Gains The second focus area has been in chasing incremental gains in both production and controlling of costs.
In the production area this involves focusing our engineers and operating teams to deeply understand the constraints we face on a daily basis and slowly and systematically alleviate them.
Through this kind of focused attention on incremental delivery, we have been able to set, break, and set again, new production records for the site.
We are very proud of the fact that last year we achieved an average of 102,000 barrels a day of main fuel production where our previous best was 97,000 barrels a day.
We have also applied a similar concept to finding where we can save costs.
In the past two years we have been working with the Victorian Regional Channels Authority and the Geelong Harbour Master to utilise the dynamic underkeel clearance system which allow us to more fully loads ships as the system allows us to take advantage of increased draught in the channels and bay.
The system allows for the pilots on the ship to get a realtime view of the clearance off the sea bed as a ship passes through the channel.
This added level of assurance enables us to bring in bigger parcels of crude oil which saves us money.
We have been able to gain around 40cm in draught which might sound small but every 10cm of draught is worth about $1 million every year.
It also means fewer delays during difficult tidal and weather conditions.
There are any number of smaller opportunities as well, and they all add up. Upskilling Our People The final and perhaps most important area of focus is on upskilling our people.
We have such a diverse workforce who all have different roles at the refinery.
Our innovation program is more than anything about cultural change.
The most powerful thing we can do is to harness the collective knowledge and experience on our site and when we have people who have worked with us for decades we have loads of experience to draw on.
We have worked with a few different innovation consultants to train people across the organisation but most recently we have been working with Geelong company G2 Innovation to provide our frontline teams with new skills and practices to deploy in their roles.
One of the interesting ideas that has come from this group, is that they told us they could do more if we stop rigidly scheduling them from job to job.
To check this assertion, we decided to do a small trial, and place a few individuals in their areas but in an unscheduled way. In the first month of that trial, the results blew us away.
It really demonstrates the power of listening to our workforce and empowering them to be part of the solution.
Our journey is far from over and we are learning and adapting our approach all the time.
We want Geelong Refinery to have a productive and longterm future not only for our own workers and business but for the benefit of the broader community.