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M3 Technology News and Events
GS Caltex Scheduling and Blend Optimization Project Kicked Off 
GS Caltex, Yeosu, Korea, awarded their Refinery Scheduling and Blend Optimization Project to M3. Dr. Dong said "We are honored to be selected by one of the largest oil refining complexes in the world. GS Caltex has a strong reputation in the industry for its technological and operational excellence."
GS Caltex has crude oil refining facilities in Yeosu, Korea with a capacity of 750,000 barrels a day, and provides a stable supply of oil products to the national and the worldwide markets. The refinery production scheduling & blending optimization project includes operational activities such as crude oil scheduling, plant and process unit scheduling, multi-period blend optimization of crude oil, gasoline, diesel and other fuels and integration with various plant and enterprise information systems.
GS-Caltex aims to be Korea's total energy service leader, performing, not only in the petroleum and petrochemical businesses, but also diversifying its energy business to cover all energy fields including: City gas, LNG, Electric power, Exploration & production, New and Renewable Energy.
2010 Award: Largest Houston-Based Software Development Companies 
Houston Business Journal recognized M3 for being ranked #15 among the "Largest Houston-Based Software Development Companies."
M3 Supports the 2010 Valero Energy Foundation Benefit for Children M3 Tech is proud to support the 2010 Valero Texas Open Benefit for Children Golf Classic, a project of the Valero Energy Foundation, that raises money for children's charities in the communities where Valero has major operations.
M3 co-sponsors 2010 Shell Houston Open, a chance for CHILDREN M3 Tech is proud to co-sponsor the 2010 Shell Houston Open PGA Golf Tournament providing a chance for CHILDREN .
Kicking Off an Exciting New Year M3 Moved to New Offices 
On January 4, 2010 M3 moved into our new offices:
10375 Richmond Avenue, Suite 380 Houston, Texas 77042 We are just down the road from our previous address. We are still on Richmond Avenue just inside the beltway. Please come visit us when you have a chance.
A Supermajor Oil Company Purchased an Enterprise License for M3's Trading Solution The company purchased an enterprise license for M3's SIMTO M-Blend (multi-blend optimization) and SIMTO Integration Depot software for its worldwide trading business. The solution includes blend optimization, inventory management and scheduling management. M3's multi-period blending software will provide a rapid analysis tool for optimizing blends, managing inventories and sharing common work practices across multiple locations. M-Blend will be used as the standard blend optimization tool for distillate, fuel oil, VGO, crude and gasoline. Collaboration between traders and terminal blenders, using the multi-user / multi-model system, will significantly reduce the time to value a trade and make better informed trading decisions.
Agile Supply Chain Planning Hydrocarbon Processing Magazine, October 2009 Authors: Chad Thomas & David Tong, Chevron; David Jasper & Craig Acuff, M3View pdf: Chevron Planning Article Historically refinery planning begins with setting constraints and targets, and optimizing an objective function in a LP model. As we look beyond the refinery and include more of the Supply Chain, additional information is needed for building a better optimized plan. Agile Supply Chain Planning requires a timely assembly of enterprise and refinery data, more user functional perspectives, rapid turn-around of plan improvements, user friendly visual tools, and synthesis of new/improved LP cases. The supply chain planning workspace can help businesses plan better, to perform better, across the wide spectrum of procurement, manufacturing, and distribution activities. Manufacturing costs are reduced by aligning the refinery production forecast with demand and trading opportunities and reducing overall feedstock costs. A planning workspace can integrate with the refinery scheduling systems so that the production forecast as well as constraints, inventory, operating parameters (i.e. process unit run rates) can be easily shared. This helps refinery management sync up with procurement and distribution planning objectives.
NPRA Q&A and Technology Forum Oct 12th - 14th, 2009 Fort Worth, TexasAgile Supply Chain Planning Authors: Chad Thomas & David Tong, Chevron; David Jasper & Craig Acuff, M3 Historically refinery planning begins with setting constraints and targets, and optimizing an objective function in a LP model. As we look beyond the refinery and include more of the Supply Chain, additional information is needed for building a better optimized plan. Agile Supply Chain Planning requires a timely assembly of enterprise and refinery data, more user functional perspectives, rapid turn-around of plan improvements, user friendly visual tools, and synthesis of new/improved LP cases.Scheduling for Performance: from Managing Inventory to Managing Quality Authors: Carlos DeAlmeida, Mark Georgen, Scott Godfrey, David Hollingsworth & Joe Van Gogh, Tesoro Corp.; Dong Dong & Nam Nguyen, M3Read interview with Mark at 2009 NPRA Q&A about Tesoro Refinery Scheduling Refineries seek to improve profits under the pressures of business climate, regulatory compliance, and customers' demands. One way is to improve the use of current assets through scheduling for performance. Scheduling refining processes is thus reaching beyond inventory management to quality management to cope with feedstock variations, process unit limitations, and product requirements. With the forecasting power of scheduling tools, refineries are tracking the quality of crude oil charges to ensure that the crude units are operating in the right mode. We are monitoring the intermediate streams not only to maximize production but also to fill process units and comply with environmental regulations. We are optimizing product blending in both long-term and short-term schedules to meet demands and product specifications while best utilizing current inventories. Managing the quality of process streams has helped respond quickly with changes in crude oil supply and market conditions. More information please visit http://www.npra.org/
M3 Technology Announces Strategic Expansion Plans for Europe M3 announced the next phase in support of its growth strategy. M3 Tech will open an office in London, England on September 21, 2009. Dr. Dong, Chairman and CEO of M3 Technology, said “The opening of our office in London, to support our growth throughout Europe, marks a milestone in our ability to be more responsive to our customers.” Dr. Dong continued by announcing that Simon Rogers has joined M3 and will head the European operation. Rogers will be responsible for overseeing the growth of market share in this emerging territory. Prior to joining M3, Rogers was the Chief Information Officer with KBC Process Technology where he had previously served as Vice President of Software Solutions and as Vice President of Sales. Prior to KBC, Simon Rogers had positions of progressive responsibility at Honeywell for 10 years. Rogers said “I am excited to join the M3 team and look forward to helping European clients to benefit from M3's state of the art technology”. Dr. Dong continued by saying “We are very pleased that Simon is joining M3. I am very confident that Simon's experience and leadership will give M3 a significant presence in Europe.”
2009 Award: Houston's Top Software Development Companies The M3 was recognized as #15 in the list of the Top 25 Software Development Companies by the Houston Business Journal, June 2009
Tesoro Corp. Standardizes on M3 Technology for Oil Refinery Scheduling and Blend Optimization Tesoro has licensed M3 Technology enterprise, refinery scheduling software including SIMTO® Scheduling (scheduling all tank transfers, crude oil scheduling, process unit scheduling and product run downs), SIMTO M-Blend (multi-period blend optimization for crude and fuels blending) and SIMTO Global (provides for managing global refining assets and inventories) as well as Integration Depot for all of Tesoro's refineries.
M3 Supports the 2009 Valero Energy Foundation Benefit for Children M3 Tech is proud to support the 2009 Valero Texas Open Benefit for Children Golf Classic, a project of the Valero Energy Foundation, that raises money for children's charities in the communities where Valero has major operations.
M3 co-sponsors 2009 Shell Houston Open, a chance for CHILDREN M3 Tech was proud to co-sponsor the 2009 Shell Houston Open PGA Golf Tournament providing a chance for CHILDREN .
Major Project Kicked Off in January 2009 M3 kicked off our first project in Asia at Singapore Refining Company. SRC processes about 285,000 b/d of crude oil and is a major producer of refined products to the region. The project includes our complete suite of scheduling applications. We are proud to be selected for this important project. SRC will be our showcase site in Asia.
Product Releases, January 2009 2008 was a big software development year for M3. We significantly improved our Scheduling Solutions. In Scheduling we added database referential integrity to better support facility renaming and deleting. Our scheduling activities now have full undo & redo and snapshots with rewind. Our new color coded case comparison feature works with Cases or Snapshots. M-Blend now works smoother from a configuration GUI. For constant usage, all applications use our real estate saving tabbed navigation and are localizable. Planning's major highlight is the Planning Workspace 1.0 release with is visualization driven by powerful editors and reports that can aggregate & disaggregate, and drill up & down plus synthesize optimizer input. Planning
2008 User Conference - Resounding Success The M3 2008 Annual User Conference was held November 12-14 in San Antonio, TX. and was a spectacular success. First we would like to thank the client speakers who brought so much real world experience to the conference. In addition, we wish to thank the many attendees. The feedback we received was much appreciated. The conference included excellent presentation from users of SIMTO Scheduling, SIMTO M-Blend, Planning Workspace and Integration Depot. There were enlightening presentations about Enterprise Intelligence and about the Refinery of the Future. Presentations were made about the product enhancements in the new releases. Brief training was presented on how to use the new features. There was also an opportunity to meet some of the key product developers to discuss the new releases. There was more to the conference than just hard work. Everybody enjoyed the delicious meals and everyone had a fun filled evening at the Cibolo Ranch including hay rides, calf roping, many games and line dancing. Of course the Bar-B-Q was fabulous. Many spouses attended the conference and they were treated to an afternoon at the SPA. Many also enjoyed the visit to the famous Alamo. The collage below illustrates the broad scope of the conference. We are looking forward to the 2009 User Conference. Plan for next year >
End-to-End Refinery Scheduling Drilling & Exploration World Journal, October 2008 Authors: Robert Hutchings, Dr. Dong Dong & Nam Nguyen, M3View pdf: End-to-End Refinery Scheduling Article End-to-End Refinery Scheduling describes how refinery scheduling including crude blending, jetty management, process unit scheduling, gasoline and fuels blening is simplified with interactive process flowsheet models, Gantt charts to optimize plant events and case comparisons to evaluate operating scenarios. This helps make difficult and time-constrained decisions. SIMTO simulates the impact of crude quality changes on product yields. M-Blend optimizes multi-blends over multi-periods to minimize costs and quality giveaway. Dock Manager automatically schedules cargo receipts and shipments within constraints from weather to terminal inventory. These applications work together seamlessly and communicate with other systems through SIMTO Integration Depot and Web Services.
2008 Fast Tech 50 Award - Houston Business Journal The 2008 Fast Tech 50 symbolizes Houston's entrepreneurial spirit. M3 was ranked number 3 among the fastest growth companies in Houston. "It is an honor and privilege to win FastTech 50 award. We are very proud of our spectacular growth. I give all credits to M3 employees. M3 has the most dedicated, creative and professional employees. They are determined to deliver the world class products and services for our customers." "Our people, business model, and technology positioned us well to meet our changing customer's needs and fuel us for the future growth." Dr. Dong, CEO
2008 NPRA Q&A and Technology Forum M3 Technology was honored to make two presentations at the 2008 NPRA Q&A and Technology Forum:
2008 Award: Houston's Top Software Development Companies The M3 was recognized as one of the Top 25 Software Development Companies by the Houston Business Journal, June 2008 |
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